The LASS (Larger Aperture Superconducting Solenoid) spectrometer

Abstract

LASS is the acronym for the Large Aperture Superconducting Solenoid spectrometer which is located in an rf-separated hadron beam at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. This spectrometer was constructed in order to perform high statistics studies of multiparticle final states produced in hadron reactions. Such reactions are frequently characterized by events having complicated topologies and/or relatively high particle multiplicity. Their detailed study requires a spectrometer which can provide good resolution in momentum and position over almost the entire solid angle subtended by the production point. In addition, good final state particle identification must be available so that separation of the many kinematically-overlapping final states can be achieved. Precise analyses of the individual reaction channels require high statistics, so that the spectrometer must be capable of high data-taking rates in order that such samples can be acquired in a reasonable running time. Finally, the spectrometer must be complemented by a sophisticated off-line analysis package which efficiently finds tracks, recognizes and fits event topologies and correctly associates the available particle identification information. This, together with complicated programs which perform specific analysis tasks such as partial wave analysis, requires a great deal of software effort allied to a very large computing capacity. This paper describes the construction and performance of the LASS spectrometer, which is an attempt to realize the features just discussed. The configuration of the spectrometer corresponds to the data-taking on K and K interactions in hydrogen at 11 GeV/c which took place in 1981 and 1982. This constitutes a major upgrade of the configuration used to acquire lower statistics data on 11 GeV/c K p interactions during 1977 and 1978, which is also described briefly.