Worldwide network of hypernuclear experiments
Today we are at the verge of a new impact from the experiments planned or already operative at various laboratories all over the world. The complementary of these different experimental approaches to hypernuclei provides a wide basis for a comprehensive understanding of strange hadrons in cold hadronic matter during the next decade.
- In Japan at J-PARC hypernuclei will be produced by intense meson beams. The experiments will focus on the g-spectroscopy of single L-hypernuclei, X-hypernuclei by the missing mass method and ground state decays of double hypernuclei in hybrid-emulsion experiments.
- The HYPHI experiment at GSI is searching for hypernuclei in peripheral heavy ion collisions at energies around 2AGeV. Final results of the first experiment are expected early 2011.
- In the United States the STAR collaboration has recently reported the first observation of hypernuclei and anti-hypernuclei in relativistic heavy ion collisions. Also the FOPI collaboration has presented first preliminary results on the search hypernuclei.
- These results and the ongoing search for hypernuclei by the ALICE experiment at LHC in CERN open a new window towards the transition from a quark-gluon system to the common world of hadrons and complex nuclei. Heavy ion experiments will provide precise information on the lifetime on single hypernuclei. The possibility to produce multistrange nuclei and to measure their groundstate masses needs however further studies.
- The experimental program at Jeferson Laboratory has been completed and at the moment the 12GeV upgrade is going on. Several light hypernuclei have been studied by electro-production so far. The analysis of the latest experiments performed in 2009 is ongoing and new results are expected soon. The experimental program at JLAB is not expected to continue before 2012. The future program is will focus on precision pion spectroscopy and the excitation spectrum of medium heavy single hypernuclei.
- With the commissioning of the 1.6 GeV electron beam of MAMI-C the study of hypernuclei has become possible in Mainz. Thus the activity at JLAB will be complemented by experiments planned at MAMI. The key elements of the experimental program at MAMI are the measurement of the angle distribution of the hypernuclei close to zero degree by missing mass studies and the precision pion spectroscopy.
- PANDA at FAIR will study double hypernuclei by high resolution gamma-spectroscopy. This experiment complements measurements of ground state masses of double hypernuclei in emulsions at J-PARC or in heavy ion reactions. In addition, hyperon-antihyperon production in antiproton-nucleus collisions will help to explore the potential of antihyperons in nuclei.