The Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research and the Compressed Baryonic Matter Experiment

The Compressed Baryonic Matter (CBM) experiment will be one of the major scientific activities at the future Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) in Darmstadt. The goal of the CBM research program is to explore the QCD phase diagram in the region of high baryon densities using high-energy nucleus-nucleus collisions. This includes the study of the equation-of-state of nuclear matter at high densities, and the search for the deconfinement and chiral phase transitions. The CBM detector is designed to measure both bulk observables with large acceptance and rare diagnostic probes such as charmed particles and vector mesons decaying into lepton pairs. The layout and the physics performance of the proposed CBM experimental facility will be discussed.