The PANDA experiment at the international accelerator Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research in Europe (FAIR) near GSI, Darmstadt, Germany will address fundamental questions of hadron physics. Excellent Particle Identification (PID) over a large range of solid angles and particle momenta will be essential to meet the objectives of the rich physics program. Charged PID for the barrel region of the PANDA target spectrometer will be provided by a DIRC (Detection of Internally Reflected Cherenkov light) detector. The PANDA Barrel DIRC is designed to cover the polar angle range of 22-140 degrees and separate charged pions from kaons for momenta between 0.5 GeV/c and 3.5 GeV/c with a separation power of at least 3 standard deviations. The design is based on the successful BABAR DIRC and the SuperB FDIRC R&D with several important improvements to optimize the performance for PANDA, such as a focusing lens system, fast timing, a compact fused silica prism as expansion region, and lifetime-enhanced Microchannel Plate PMTs for photon detection. Detailed Monte-Carlo simulations were performed and two reconstruction methods were developed to study the performance of the design. We will discuss the technical design of the PANDA Barrel DIRC, based on narrow bars made of synthetic fused silica and a complex multi-layer spherical lens system and present the result of tests of a large system prototype with a mixed hadron beam at CERN

The future PANDA experiment with a next generation detector will focus on hadron spectroscopy. It will use cooled anti-proton beams with a momentum between 1.5 GeV/c and 15 GeV/c interacting with various targets. This allows to directly form all states of all quantum numbers and measure their widths with an accuracy of a few tens of keV. The experiment will be located at the exceptional Facility for Anti-proton and Ion Research in Germany, which is currently under construction. The electromagnetic target calorimeter of the PANDA experiment has the challenging aim to detect high energy photons with excellent energy resolution over the full dynamic range from 15 GeV down to a few tens of MeV within a 2 T solenoid. The target calorimeter itself is divided into a barrel and two endcaps. The individual crystals will be read out with two precisely matched large area avalanche photo diodes. In the very inner part of the forward endcap vacuum phototetrodes will be used instead. To reach the demands of the experiment, improved PbWO 4 scintillator crystals, cooled down to −25 ◦ C have been chosen. They provide a fast decay time for highest count rates, short radiation length for compactness, improved light yield for lowest thresholds and excellent radiation hardness [1]. The main part of the 15.740 crystals needed have been produced by the Bogoroditsk Plant of Technochemical Products in Russia. After stopping their business, a new potential producer for the missing 41% of crystals have been found. The company Crytur in Czech Republic provided 150 promising preproduction crystals so far. Except some of the very first produced crystals, all samples exceed the required high quality parameters. Most of them have already been used for the first major assem

This is the written proceeding for the LEAP 2018 Conference, that was held in Paris. It will be published in 'Hyperfine interaction'. To be sent before May 16, 2018. The \PANDA experiment is a core project of the future Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) at GSI in Darmstadt. It will investigate antiproton-proton annihilations on nucleons and nuclei with the aim to explore fundamental questions in the non-perturbative regime of QCD as the origin of the hadron mass. The multi-purpose detector is currently under construction. The intense and high quality anti-proton beam will span the momentum range between 1.5 and 15 GeV/$c$. Properties of hadrons, leptons, and photons in the final states will be determined with very high precision. A rich physics program including the study of resonances in the charmonium and open charm region, electromagnetic form factors, and hypernuclear physics is planned. The worldwide collaboration gathers today more than 450 physicists from 60 institutions in 19 countries. An overview of the \PANDA experiment is given, focussing on aspects of the physics program that will be investigated as soon as the facility becomes operational.