Proposal for a Hadron Blind Detector for PHENIX

• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.physics/0307101
• Publication Date: 2003-01-01
• Authors: Kozlov, A.; Aidala, C.; Azmoun, B.; Fraenkel, Z.; Hemmick, T.; Khachaturov, B.; Milov, A.; Ravinovich, I.; Tserruya, I.; Stoll, S.; Woody, C.; Zhou, S.
• Keywords: Physics - Instrumentation and Detectors; 0103 physical sciences; FOS: Physical sciences; Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det); 7. Clean energy; 01 natural sciences

A Hadron Blind Detector (HBD) is proposed as upgrade of the PHENIX detector at RHIC, BNL. The HBD will allow the measurement of low-mass e+e- pairs from the decay of the light vector mesons rho, omega, phi and the low-mass continuum in Au-Au collisions at energies up to sqrt{s_{NN}}= 200 GeV. From MC simulations and general considerations, the HBD has to identify electrons with very high efficiency (> 90%), double hit recognition better than 90%, moderate pion rejection factor of ~200 and radiation budget of the order of 1% of a radiation length. The first choice under study is a windowless Cherenkov detector, operated with pure CF4, in a special proximity focus configuration with a CsI photocathode and a multistage GEM amplification element.<br/>5 pages, 3 figures Presented at the Fourth International Workshop on Ring Imaging Cherenkov Detectors (RICH 2002), Pylos, Greece, June 5-10, 2002<br/>