High precision γ spectroscopy of ΛΛ-Hypernuclei at the PANDA experiment

Abstract

Hypernuclear research will be one of the main topics addressed by the PANDA experiment at FAIR at Darmstadt (Germany). Thanks to the use of stored antiproton beams, copious production of double ΛΛ-Hypernuclei is expected at the PANDA experiment, which will enable high precision gamma spectroscopy of such nuclei for the first time. At PANDA excited states of hypernuclei will be used as a starting point for the formation of double ΛΛ-Hypernuclei. In order to predict the yield of particle-stable double hypernuclei a microcanonical decay model was developed. For the detection of these nuclei, a devoted hypernuclear detector setup is planned. This set-up consists, in addition to the general purpose of the PANDA set-up, of a primary nuclear target for the production of pairs, a secondary active target for the hypernuclei formation and the identification of associated decay products and a germanium array detector to perform gamma spectroscopy. Moreover, one of the most challenging issues of this project is the fact that all detector systems need to operate in the presence of a high magnetic field and a large hadronic background. In these proceedings details concerning the identification procedure of double hypernuclei and the suppression of background will be presented. In addition, the current status of the activities related to the detector developments for this challenging programme will be briefly given.