PANDA Website

The PANDA detector at the international accelerator Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research in Europe (FAIR) addresses fundamental questions of hadron physics. An excellent hadronic particle identification (PID) will be accomplished by two DIRC (Detection of Internally Reflected Cherenkov light) counters in the target spectrometer. The design for the barrel region covering polar angles between 22deg to 140deg is based on the successful BABAR DIRC with several key improvements, such as fast photon timing and a compact imaging region. The novel Endcap Disc DIRC will cover the smaller forward angles between 5deg (10deg) to 22deg in the vertical (horizontal) direction. Both DIRC counters will use lifetime-enhanced microchannel plate PMTs for photon detection in combination with fast readout electronics. Geant4 simulations and tests with several prototypes at various beam facilities have been used to evaluate