| The HARP detector at the CERN PS (2007) | |||||||||||||||
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Abstract | |||||||||||||||
| 35 pages, 37 figures.-- PACS nr.: 95.55.Vj.-- ISI Article Identifier: 000244576000001.-- Available online 10 November 2006.. HARP is a high-statistics, large solid angle experiment to measure hadron production using proton and pion beams with momenta between 1.5 and 15 GeV/c impinging on many different solid and liquid targets from low to high Z. The experiment, located in the T9 beam of the CERN PS, took data in 2001 and 2002. For the measurement of momenta of produced particles and for the identification of particle types, the experiment includes a large-angle spectrometer, based on a Time Projection Chamber and a system of Resistive Plate Chambers, and a forward spectrometer equipped with a set of large drift chambers, a threshold Cherenkov detector, a time-of-flight wall and an electromagnetic calorimeter. The large angle system uses a solenoidal magnet, while the forward spectrometer is based on a dipole magnet. Redundancy in particle identification has been sought, to enable the cross-calibration of efficiencies and to obtain a few percent overall accuracy in the cross-section measurements. Detector construction, operation and initial physics performances are reported. In addition, the full chain for data recording and analysis, from trigger to the software framework, is described.. The experiment was made possible by grants from the Institut Interuniversitaire des Sciences Nucléaires (Belgium), Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, Grant FPA2003-06921-c02-02 and Generalitat Valenciana, grant GV00-054-1, CERN (Geneva, Switzerland), the German Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (Germany), the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (Italy), Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (Dubna), INR RAS (Moscow) and the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (UK). We gratefully acknowledge their support.. Peer reviewed | |||||||||||||||
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