S. Reinecke

The CBM RICH detector

The main task of the future Compressed Baryonic Matter experiment (CBM), to be operated at the FAIR facility at GSI, Darmstadt, is the exploration of the properties of super-dense nuclear matter. The search for in-medium modifications of hadrons, the study of the transition from dense hadronic matter to quark-gluon matter, and the possible location of a critical endpoint in the QCD phase diagram of strongly interacting matter are the most important physics goals of CBM. Detailed measurements of di-leptons stemming from low-mass vector-mesons and charmonium have a large potential to shed light on the existence of such effects. The Ring Imaging Cherenkov detector of the CBM experiment aims at a clean and efficient electron identification. It is foreseen to use CO2 as radiator gas and equip the detector with a focussing mirror system and multi-anode photomultiplier tubes as photon detector. In this paper we present selected results of R&D studies and beam test measurements of the detector prototype performed in fall 2011 and 2012 at the CERN/PS with a mixed electron-pion beam.