CASTOR: A Dedicated Detector for the Detection of Centauros and Strangelets at the LHC

Under publication in J. Phys. G: Nucl. Part. Phys. 23 (1997) 2069-2080 We present a specialised detector system, CASTOR, which, as an integral part of the ALICE experiment, will cover the search for centauros and strangelets in central Pb+Pb collisions at the LHC. CASTOR will cover the very forward, baryon-rich pseudorapidity region 4.5≤eta≤6.2 and will consist of a charged particle multiplicity detector, a photon multiplicity detector and a calorimeter with electromagnetic and hadronic sections. The physics motivation is presented, along with simulation results and the detector design. The influence of the background on the identification of centauro-type events is discussed.