The CEDAR-H upgrade

2 DECEMBER, 2023 | By Antonio Lafuente Mazuecos

2022 will also mark the end of the CEDAR-H upgrade, an effort that has been unfolding over the last years to retrofit an existing CEDAR-N (North) and make it compatible with the use of Hydrogen as dispersive medium. This modification will help reduce the scattering in the detector whilst maintaining the current kaon identification efficiency, so important for NA62 in their search of ultra-rare decays that could shed light on physics beyond the Standard Model.

The Mangin mirror and the chromatic corrector, the two core optical components made from high-quality quartz blanks with sub-micron shape tolerances, were finally produced and installed in the detector. The optics had to be aligned following a new procedure developed in collaboration with SY-BI. And the deployment of the infrastructure needed to commission the detector in H6 while using Hydrogen, a potentially explosive gas, involved the collaboration of more than 15 groups and services over months of preparation.