Performance studies of the P¯ANDA planar GEM-tracking detector in physics simulations

The P¯ANDA experiment will be installed at the future facility for antiproton and ion research (FAIR) in Darmstadt, Germany, to study events from the annihilation of protons and antiprotons. The P¯ANDA detectors can cover a wide physics program about baryon spectroscopy and nucleon structure as well as the study of hadrons and hypernuclear physics including the study of excited hyperon states. One very specific feature of most hyperon ground states is the long decay length of several centimeters in the forward direction. The central tracking detectors of the P¯ANDA setup are not sufficiently optimized for these long decay lengths. Therefore, using a set of the planar GEM-tracking detectors in the forward region of interest can improve the results in the hyperon physics-benchmark channel. The current conceptual designed P¯ANDA GEM-tracking stations contribute the measurement of the particles emitted in the polar angles between about 2 to 22 degrees. For this designed detector performance and acceptance, studies have been performed using one of the important hyperonic decay channel p¯p→Λ¯Λ→p¯pπ+π− in physics simulations. The simulations were carried out using the PandaRoot software packages based on the FairRoot framework.