CARME — The CRYRING Array for Reaction MEasurements: A new approach to study nuclear reactions using storage rings

The low-energy CRYRING@ESR storage ring, recently commissioned at GSI@FAIR (Germany), is a world-unique facility able to decelerate and store beams produced in-flight to energies E≤10 MeV/u. CRYRING@ESR offers the unique opportunity to exploit high quality, pure, radioactive beams of species difficult to produce via the ISOL method for reaction studies directly at energies of astrophysical interest. The use of thin, pure, windowless in-ring targets combined with the re-circulating beam also presents significant advantages in terms of background and luminosity. This paper describes a new modular nuclear and atomic physics detection array, CARME (CRYRING Array for Reaction MEasurements), specifically designed to allow these investigations to be carried out for the first time in the Extreme High Vacuum (XHV) environment of the CRYRING@ESR. CARME mounts a high granularity silicon strip detector system adapted for XHV conditions, and will be used for high resolution direct and indirect charged particle reaction studies.