Reconstruction of charged kaons in the three pion decay channel in Pb + Au 158 AGeV collisions by the CERES experiment

Strangeness production in ultra-relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions is one of the most important probes of hot and dense nuclear matter. Yields and spectra of hadrons carrying strangeness are being studied over a broad range of energies. A remarkable result is that the yields of strange hadrons appear to be in chemical equilibrium in nucleus-nucleus collisions in contrast to observations in elementary collisions. The first part of this thesis is dedicated to the reconstruction of charged kaons in central Pb+Au collisions at the top SPS energy with the CERES pectrometer. The analysis scheme is based on the reconstruction of the decay of charged kaons in three charged pions. This approach is, with the exception of the pioneering work of the NA35 experiment, applied for the first time in ultra relativistic heavy ion collisions for the charged kaons reconstruction. In total 102k K+ and 57k K- were reconstructed in 24.3M central Pb+Au collisions. The mid-rapidity yields are 31.8 for K+ and 19.3 for the K-. These results together with K-/K+, K+/pi+ and K-/pi- ratios are compared with the existing results from NA49, NA44, NA57 and CERES measurements as well as with thermal model predictions. The second part of this thesis is devoted to the study of fast Transition Radiation Detectors (TRD). Results of a stand alone simulation study of the performance of a TRD detector with gas chamber read out in terms of electron-pion separation as a function of the main parameters of the radiator and readout detector are shown. The optimization of the detector was based on the requirements of the CBM experiment. A comparison of simulated energy deposition to experimental data is presented.