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Description
The MAGNEX large acceptance magnetic spectrometer, which consists of a large aperture vertically focusing quadrupole and a horizontally bending dipole magnet, is installed at the Laboratori Nazionali del Sud of the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN-LNS) in Catania.
During MAGNEX data taking, the experimental campaigns were performed using ion beams up to 1010 pps provided by the Superconducting Cyclotron (SC) at INFN-LNS. Nevertheless, in the context of the NUMEN project, which aims to get accurate values of the tiny Double Charge Exchange (DCE) cross-sections and to perform a systematic study of a large number of nuclei of interest for the neutrinoless double beta decay (0𝜈𝛽𝛽), the SC is being fully refurbished featuring ion beams with energies from 15 up to 70 MeV/u and intensities up to $10^{13}$ pps. The high rate of incident particles demands a complete upgrade of the MAGNEX Focal Plane detector, which will consist of a new Particle Identification (PID) system and a new gas tracker detector along with a $\gamma$-calorimeter. The PID system is equipped with a large number (720) of ∆E-E telescopes of 110 $\mu$m thin SiC detectors and 5 mm thick CsI(Tl) crystals arranged in 36 towers that will work in a neutron-rich environment. For this reason, the radiation hardness of the SiC has been tested, as well as the performance in detecting ions and the border profile with a proton-microbeam. A prototype of the PID wall has been built and studied thanks to an experimental test with an 18O beam at 272 MeV incident energy and $^{197}$Au and $^{12}$C targets performed at INFN-Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro, Italy. This contribution will present the design of the new PID system, SiC characterizations, and the prototype's performances.
