PA-PRO-2011-003

The PANDA experiment at the new Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research in Europe (FAIR)
at GSI, Darmstadt, will study fundamental questions of hadron physics and QCD using
high-intensity cooled antiproton beams with momenta between 1.5 and 15 GeV/c.
Efficient Particle Identification (PID) for a wide momentum range and the full solid angle
is required for reconstructing the various physics channels of the PANDA program.
Hadronic PID in the barrel region of the detector will be provided by a DIRC (Detection of
Internally Reflected Cherenkov light) counter.
The design is based on the successful BABAR DIRC with important improvements, such as
focusing optics and fast photon timing.
Several of these improvements, including different radiator geometries and optics, were tested
in particle beams at GSI and at CERN.
We will discuss the design and performance of the prototypes in the 2011 and 2012 test beam
campaigns.