Production of strange baryons and antibaryons in relativistic ion collisions

A new state of matter - the quark-gluon plasma - may be produced in $^{32}$S interactions with heavy nuclei A (Ag, Cu, Pb and S targets) at beam momenta up to 200 GeV/c per nucleon. A possible signature of this state is a strongly enhanced yield of strange quark pairs. The aim of the experiment is therefore a measurement of differential cross sections for production of neutral kaons, $\Lambda, \Xi, \Omega$ and their antiparticles with high statistics. Furthermore charged particle trajectories will be reconstructed and the total energy flow and its fluctuations will be determined in the forward c.m.s. hemisphere. \\\\The experiment is performed with a modified EHS configuration; its characteristic features are:\\\\ - Tracking chambers.\\ - A Cerenkov counter.\\ - A TPC for 3-dimensional unambiguous space point tracking.\\ - A magnet to sweep most of the produced particles from the tracking devices.\\ - Hadronic and electromagnetic calorimeters covering hermetically the forward c.m.s. hemisphere.\\ - A fast data acquisition system based upon Fastbus and VME.