One of the most interesting fields in modern high energy physics is the experimental study of quantum chromodynamics. The PANDA- experiment at FAIR aims to explore this field by probing hadrons with unprecedented precision and sensitivity. It will use proton-antiproton collisions to reach center-of-mass energies of up to 5.5 GeV. Combined with a high luminosity, this will make the detection of exotic resonances with tiny cross sections feasible. In order to support the experiment with simulations, the software framework PANDARoot was developed. In this talk, the reconstruction of a hybrid candidate in the charmo- nium sector with PANDARoot will be presented. The decay channel involving the hybrid candidate ultimately decays into seven photons, which makes it an excellent candidate to evaluate the performance of the electromagnetic calorimeter. While seven photons already create immense combinatorical background within the signal channel, there exist at least four background channels with a very similar decay pat- tern. Hence it is important to maximize the statistical significance of the signal. For this, different optimization algorithms were evaluated, where a genetic algorithm was found to be the most suitable one. Its features and performance will be discussed. This project is supported by BMBF and HIC for Fair.

The Barrel DIRC (Detection of Internally Reflected Cherenkov light) detector will be an essential part of the hadronic PID system of the PANDA experiment at GSI, Darmstadt. Covering the polar angle range of 22-140 degrees, it will provide pion-kaon separation power of at least 3 standard deviations for a charge particle momenta between 0.5 GeV/c and 3.5 GeV/c. The design of the Barrel DIRC features the narrow bar radiator made from synthetic fused silica, a complex multi-layer spherical lens focusing system, a prism-shaped fused silica expansion volume, and MCP-PMTs (MicroChannel-Plate PhotoMultiplier Tubes) to detect the location and arrival time of the Cherenkov photons. All components were tested and successfully validated with a sophisticated prototype in a mixed hadron particle beam at CERN during 2015-2017. Additional test was conducted at CERN in 2018 with a purpose to optimize the number of used MCP-PMTs. Result of the optimization with the analysis and a comparison to the Geant4 simulation will be presented.