Performance of a prototype Straw Tube Tracker for the PANDA experiment

The PANDA experiment is one of the pillars of the future Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) in Darmstadt, Germany. The PANDA physics program is focused on answering fundamental questions related to Quantum Chromo Dynamics (QCD), using antiproton collisions on proton and nuclear targets. The central Straw Tube Tracker (STT) will be the main tracking detector which will reconstruct tracks induced by charged particles (with a transversal spatial resolution of ≃ 150 μm) and it will measure the specific energy-losses for particle identification (PID) with an energy resolution better than 10%. The PID information is especially needed to separate protons, kaons and pions in the momentum region below 1 GeV/c. Results obtained with a prototype STT using a proton and a deuteron beam in the momentum range from 0.5 to 3.0 GeV/c are shown and discussed.