Particle identification with a disc DIRC detector

The PANDA experiment at the future FAIR facility needs excellent particle identification to do precision studies of antiproton-proton reactions in the 1.5-15 GeV/c momentum range. To fulfill this need, two Cherenkov detectors will be installed in the PANDA Target Spectrometer, both based on the DIRC concept that uses internally reflected Cherenkov light to perform particle identification, with a focus on the separation of pions and kaons. While the Barrel-DIRC covers central angles, the Disc-DIRC is designed to cap the forward region of theta angles between 5 and 22 degrees. It will be the first time that a Disc-DIRC is used for PID in a real physics experiment beyond prototyping. A prototyping Disc-DIRC apparatus has been developed at the JLU Giessen featuring a quarter segment of the total disc. It was equipped with 30 multi-anode-phototubes with a total of 480 photo sensor pixels. The performance of the DIRC was tested using 3 GeV electrons provided by DESY Hamburg and a mixed hadron beam provided by CERN. A first analysis of the recorded data is shown as well as results from a Monte Carlo simulation.