Speaker
Description
The Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) is the new large-scale particle accelerator planned in the US and designed to collide polarized electrons with polarized protons and nuclei and investigate the dynamics of quarks and gluons, unlocking the secrets of QCD. For the general purpose detector at EIC, the capability to distinguish charged particles over the full momentum range is required.
A prototype of dual Ring Imaging Cherenkov (dRICH), a detector which exploits the Cherenkov light produced in two different mediums, is being developed by EIC_NET to discriminate between pions, kaons and protons from few GeV/c up to 50 GeV/c, and support electron identification in the EIC hadronic endcap. Particles crossing a layer of aerogel ($n\simeq 1.02$) and a volume of $\textrm{C}_2\textrm{F}_6$ gas ($n \simeq 1.00085$) with a velocity greater than the light in medium, produce Cherenkov photons which are focalized by two different spherical mirrors onto the same photon detector array. The combined information of two imaged Cherenkov rings and the particle momentum allow to infer its mass and therefore its type. Two test beams were performed at CERN in fall 2021, when a full tracking and imaging system has been commissioned. In this presentation, the prototype and the preliminary results obtained, together with a preview of the future dRICH detector at EIC will be presented.
The development of the dRICH prototype is an EIC_NET initiative.
