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CASTOR: A FORWARD DETECTOR FOR THE IDENTIFICATION OF CENTAURO AND STRANGELETS IN NUCLEUS{NUCLEUS COLLISIONS AT THE LHC a b c d A.L.S. ANGELIS ,J.BARTKE , M.YU. BOGOLYUBSKY , S.N. FILIPPOV , b c d E. GL ADYSZ-DZIADUS , YU.V. KHARLOV , A.B. KUREPIN , d a a A.I. MAEVSKAYA ,G.MAVROMANOLAKIS , A.D. PANAGIOTOU , c b e S.A. SADOVSKY ,P. STEFANSKI ,Z.WLODARCZYK a Nuclear and Particle Physics Division, University of Athens, Hel las. b Institute of Nuclear Physics, Cracow, Poland. c Institute for High Energy Physics, Protvino, Russia. d Institute for Nuclear Research, Moscow, Russia. e Institute of Physics, Pedagogical University, Kielce, Poland. The physics motivation for a very forward detector to b e employed in heavy ion collisions at the CERN LHC is discussed. A phenomenological mo del describing the formation and decayofaCentauro reball in nucleus-nucleus collisions is presented. The CASTOR detector which is aimed to measure the hadronic and photonic contentofaninteraction and to identify deeply p enetrating ob jects in the very forward, baryon-rich phase space 5.6 7.2 in an event-by-eventmodeis describ ed. Results of simulations of the exp ected resp onse of the calorimeter, and in particular to the passage of strangelets, are presented. 1 Intro duction 1 The ALICE detector , which is aimed at investigating nucleus{nucleus col- lisions at the LHC, will b e fully instrumented for hadron and photon identi- cation only in the limited angular region around mid-rapidity,covering the 2 pseudorapidityinterval j j 1: An additional muon detector will b e in- stalled on one side and will cover the pseudorapidityinterval 2:5 4:0. A 3 pre-shower photon multiplicity detector will also b e installed on one side and will cover the pseudorapidityinterval 2:3 3:3. Finally a small-ap erture zero degree calorimeter is also foreseen, at a distance of ab out 100 m from the interaction p oint, to provide the centrality trigger. The very small acceptance hep-ex/9901038 28 Jan 1999 and lack of longitudinal and transverse segmentation in the present design of the zero degree calorimeter make it suitable for this purp ose only. This constitutes only a small part of the total available phase space which, at the design b eam energy of 2.75 A TeV for Pb ions at the LHC, extends to j j =8:7: Already at the early stages of the preparation of the ALICE prop osal some of us p ointed out that there is interesting physics b eyond mid- 4;5 rapidity .From these considerations evolved the idea of a dedicated for- Presented at XXVI I I Int. Symp. on Multiparticle Dynamics, 6-11 Sep. 1998, Delphi. Further information at: http://home.cern.ch/ angelis/castor/Welcome.html 1 6;7 ward detector, CASTOR , to provide physics information on hadrons and photons emitted in the fragmentation region. At LHC Pb-ion energies this region of phase space extends b eyond j j = 5 or 6, dep ending on the e ec- tive baryonic stopping p ower which is di erent for the various Monte-Carlo mo dels employed. In this region of extremely high baryon numb er density one can exp ect to discover new phenomena related to the high baryochemical p otential, in particular the formation of Decon ned Quark Matter DQM, which could exist e.g. in the core of neutron stars, with characteristics di er- ent from those exp ected in the much higher temp erature baryon-free region around mid-rapidity, 17 The LHC, with an energy equivalentto10 eV for a moving proton im- pinging on one at rest, will b e the rst accelerator to e ectively prob e the highest cosmic ray energy domain. Cosmic ray exp eriments have detected numerous most unusual events whose nature is still not understo o d. These events, observed in the pro jectile fragmentation rapidity region, will b e pro- duced and studied at the LHC in controlled conditions. Here we mention 8 the \Centauro" events and the \long- ying comp onent". Centauros exhibit relatively small multiplicity, complete absence or strong suppression of the electromagnetic comp onent and very high hp i. In addition, some hadron-rich T events are accompanied by a strongly p enetrating comp onent observed in the 9;10 form of halo, strongly p enetrating clusters or long-living cascades, whose 11;12 transition curves exhibit a characteristic form with many maxima . 2 A mo del for the pro duction of Centauro and Strangelets A mo del has b een develop ed in which Centauros are considered to origi- nate from the hadronization of a DQM reball of very high baryon density 3 & 2fm and baryochemical p otential >> m , pro duced in ultra- b b n 13;14;15 relativistic nucleus{nucleus collisions in the upp er atmosphere . In this mo del the DQM reball initially consists of u, d quarks and gluons. The very high baryochemical p otential prohibits the creation of uu and dd quark pairs b ecause of Pauli blo cking of u and d quarks and the factor exp =T for q u and dantiquarks, resulting in the fragmentation of gluons into ss pairs predominantly. In the subsequent hadronization this leads to the strong suppression of pions and hence of photons, but allows kaons to b e emitted, carrying away strange antiquarks, p ositivecharge, entropy and temp erature. This pro cess of strangeness distillation transforms the initial quark matter reball into a slightly strange quark matter state. In the subsequent decay and hadronization of this state non-strange baryons and strangelets will b e formed. Simulations show that strangelets could b e identi ed as the strongly 2 p enetrating particles frequently seen accompanying hadron-rich cosmic ray 5;16 events . In this manner, b oth the basic characteristics of the Centauro events small multiplicities and extreme imbalance of hadronic to photonic content and the strongly p enetrating comp onent are naturally explained. In table 1 we compare characteristics of Centauro and strongly p enetrating com- p onents strangelets, either exp erimentally observed or calculated within the context of the ab ove mo del, for cosmic rayinteractions and for nucleus{nucleus interactions at the LHC. Table 1. Average characteristic quantities of Centauro events and Strangelets pro duced in Cosmic Rays and exp ected at the LHC. Centauro Cosmic Rays LHC Interaction \Fe + N " Pb + Pb p s & 6.76 TeV 5.5 TeV Fireball mass & 180 GeV 500 GeV y 11 8.67 pr oj 4 10 ' 300 9.9 ' 5.6 cent 1 ' 0.8 cent <p > 1.75 GeV 1.75 GeV * T 9 9 Life-time 10 s 10 s * Decay prob. 10 x 10 km 1 x 1m Strangeness 14 60 - 80 f S/A ' 0.2 0.30 - 0.45 s Z/A ' 0.4 ' 0:3 Event rate & 1 ' 1000/ALICE-year \Strangelet" Cosmic Rays LHC Mass ' 7 - 15 GeV 10 - 80 GeV Z . 0 . 0 f ' 1 ' 1 s +1:2 +1:6 str cent cent * assumed 3 The design of the CASTOR detector With the ab ove considerations in mind wehave designed the CASTOR Cen- tauro And STrange Ob ject Research detector, to b e placed in the fragmen- tation region. CASTOR will cover the pseudorapidityinterval 5:6 7:2. Figures 1, 2, 3 and 4 depict the hadron and photon pseudorapidity distribu- tions as predicted by the HIJING Monte-Carlo generator for central Pb + Pb 3 collisions at the LHC. The upp er plots show distributions of multiplicity while the lower plots show distributions of energy ux. Figures 5 and 6 depict the baryon numb er pseudorapidity distributions as predicted by the HIJING and VENUS Monte-Carlo generators for central Pb + Pb collisions at the LHC. The acceptance of CASTOR is sup erimp osed on each plot. As can b e seen from the plots, while CASTOR will receive a mo derate multiplicity, its p osi- tion has b een optimized to prob e the maximum of the baryon numb er density and energy ow and to identify any e ects connected with these conditions. 1400 1200 1000 1000 800 800 600 600 400 400 200 200 0 0 -10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8η 10 -10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8η 10 Figure 1. Average photon multiplicity pseu- Figure 2. Average charged particle multi- dorapidity distribution obtained from 50 plicity pseudorapidity distribution obtained central Pb + Pb HIJING events. from 50 central Pb + Pb HIJING events. ] ] 25 TeV 5 TeV [ [ 20 4 3 15 2 10 1 5 0 0 -10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8η 10 -10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8η 10 Figure 3. Average electromagnetic energy Figure 4. Average hadronic energy pseudo- pseudorapidity distribution obtained from rapidity distribution obtained from 50 cen- 50 central Pb + Pb HIJING events. tral Pb + Pb HIJING events. 4 14 10 12 8 10 6 8 6 4 4 2 2 0 0 -2 -2 -10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8η 10 -10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8η 10 Figure 5. Average net baryon numb er pseu- Figure 6. Average net baryon numb er p deu- dorapidity distribution obtained from 50 dorapidity distribution obtained from 47 central Pb + Pb HIJING events. central Pb + Pb VENUS events. 6;7 Aschematic view of the CASTOR detector is shown in gure 7. It is optimized to measure the hadronic and photonic content ofaninterac- tion, b oth in energy and multiplicity, and to search for strongly p enetrating particles.