The P¯ ANDA experiment at FAIR

Abstract The Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research, FAIR, is presently under construction near Darmstadt, Germany. Among other large-scale installations, the P ¯ ANDA (Antiproton annihilations in Darmstadt) experiment is designed to address pertinent questions of the strong interaction in the non-perturbative region. At P ¯ ANDA, an antiproton beam, with momenta between 1.5 GeV/c and 15 GeV/c, circulating in the high-energy storage ring HESR will interact with internal targets. High interaction rates and unprecedented momentum resolusion will allow for a high discovery potential and precision experiments. The detector system of P ¯ ANDA is optimised to meet the challenges of high-resolution hadron spectroscopy in formation and production with very good background suppression. At the same time, it meets the requirements of other parts of the physics program such as hyperon and hadron structure physics. The detector is reviewed and physics goals are presented.