2023/07/21 by Scomparin, E.
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Nuclear Experiment (nucl-ex) #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Superconducting Materials and Applications
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2307.11473
openalex publication_date 2023/07/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The CERN SuperProtoSynchrotron (SPS) represents an ideal facility for fixed-target heavy-ion experiments exploring the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter in the region 200≤μ\rm B≤500 MeV. It can deliver high-intensity beams (>106 Pb/s), allowing a study of rare probes of the Quark-Gluon Plasma, including electromagnetic and hard processes. The NA61/SHINE experiment is currently active and plans to perform a first direct measurement of open charm production in Pb--Pb collisions at top SPS energy and possibly at lower energies. The project of a new experiment, NA60+, based on a muon spectrometer coupled to a vertex spectrometer is currently being developed, for the study of dimuon and heavy quark production, and a Letter of Intent was recently submitted. In this contribution the physics motivation for the studies of rare probes, the existing and planned experimental set-ups and their expected physics performance will be discussed.