The NA60 experiment: results and perspectives

The NA60 experiment takes place at the SPS at CERN, to study the production of open charm and prompt dimuons in collisions induced by proton and heavy ion beams on nuclear targets. For this task, several novel detector systems were added to the dimuon spectrometer and zero-degree calorimeter, which were previously used in the NA50 experiment. The main upgrade is a new silicon pixel vertex spectrometer. It tracks the charged particles that are produced through the collisions in the target and allows us to match their trajectories and momenta with those of the muons that are measured behind the hadron absorber in the muon spectrometer. Besides improving considerably the dimuon mass resolution, the vertex telescope measures the offset of each muon track with respect to the interaction point. This allows us to select events where charm mesons were produced. We present in this article first results from dimuon data that were acquired in Summer 2002 with a 400 GeV proton beam. A silicon microstrip telescope was used at that time, since only a part of the pixel telescope was completed. The results include an improved dimuon mass resolution and an extended phase space coverage when compared with previous experiments. Data from Pb-Pb collisions at 20 and 30 GeV per nucleon were collected in October 2002 with three planes of pixel detectors. We show the very good accuracy with which we could reconstruct the interaction vertex. We conclude with a reminder of our physics programme and the ongoing completion of the pixel detector telescope for the Indium-Indium run at 158 GeV per nucleon, scheduled for September and October 2003.