Physics with hadron beams in the COMPASS experiment

COMPASS is a new experiment under construction at the CERN SPS aimed at the study of structure and spectroscopy of hadrons with multiple types of high intensity beams. A polarised muon beam is used for deep inelastic scattering on a polarised target to study the spin structure of nucleons. The physics program connected to the hadron beams includes Primakoff scattering of pions and kaons to study their polarisabilities, central production of hybrids and glueballs in a proton beam on a liquid hydrogen target and production and leptonic and semi-leptonic decays of charmed hadrons. The COMPASS experiment uses a double forward spectrometer for best momentum resolution. Both spectrometer parts are equipped with RICH detectors, electromagnetic and hadronic calorimeters and muon filters for particle identification. (8 refs).