https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/i2017-12248-y
Review
Challenges in QCD matter physics --The scientific programme of the Compressed Baryonic Matter experiment at FAIR
1
Laboratory of Information Technologies, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR-LIT), Dubna, Russia
2
GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH (GSI), Darmstadt, Germany
3
Department of Physics, Bose Institute, Kolkata, India
4
Marian Smoluchowski Institute of Physics, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland
5
Physikalisches Institut, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
6
Department of Physics, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India
7
Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre (VECC), Kolkata, India
8
Department of Physics, University of Kashmir, Srinagar, India
9
Department of Physics, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India
10
Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEP), Moscow, Russia
11
Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt (FIAS), Frankfurt, Germany
12
Physikalisches Institut, Universität Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
13
Institut für Kernphysik, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany
14
University of Split, Split, Croatia
15
Institute for Nuclear Research (INR), Moscow, Russia
16
Horia Hulubei National Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering (IFIN-HH), Bucharest, Romania
17
Veksler and Baldin Laboratory of High Energy Physics, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR-VBLHEP), Dubna, Russia
18
Atomic and Nuclear Physics Department, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania
19
National Research Nuclear University MEPhI, Moscow, Russia
20
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany
21
Department of Physics and Department of Electronic Science, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India
22
Skobeltsyn Institute of Nuclear Phyiscs, Lomonosov Moscow State University (SINP-MSU), Moscow, Russia
23
AGH University of Science and Technology (AGH), Kraków, Poland
24
V.G. Khlopin Radium Institute (KRI), St. Petersburg, Russia
25
National Research Center “Kurchatov Institute” B.P. Konstantinov, Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute (PNPI), Gatchina, Russia
26
Fakultät für Mathematik und Naturwissenschaften, Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany
27
Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, Gießen, Germany
28
St. Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU), St. Petersburg, Russia
29
Institut für Kernphysik, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Münster, Germany
30
Department of Nuclear Physics, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Kyiv, Ukraine
31
Department of Physics, University of Jammu, Jammu, India
32
Department of Physics, Gauhati University, Guwahati, India
33
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India
34
National Research Centre “Kurchatov Institute”, Moscow, Russia
35
Institute for Computer Science, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany
36
Institut für Technische Informatik, Universität Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany
37
Institute of Physics, University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland
38
Institute of Electronic Systems, Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw, Poland
39
College of Physical Science and Technology, Central China Normal University (CCNU), Wuhan, China
40
Department of Modern Physics, University of Science & Technology of China (USTC), Hefei, China
41
Department of Physics, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India
42
High Energy Physics Department, Kiev Institute for Nuclear Research (KINR), Kyiv, Ukraine
43
Department of Engineering Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
44
Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien (IPHC), IN2P3-CNRS and Université de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France
45
Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Budapest, Hungary
46
National Research Nuclear University, Obninsk, Russia
47
Ioffe Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia
48
Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research in Europe GmbH (FAIR), Darmstadt, Germany
49
Institut für Strahlenphysik, Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), Dresden, Germany
50
College of Science, China Three Gorges University (CTGU), Yichang, China
51
Institut für Kernphysik, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany
52
Institute for High Energy Physics (IHEP), Protvino, Russia
53
Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland
54
Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics, Wigner Research Centre for Physics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary
55
Nuclear Physics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Řež, Czech Republic
56
Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar, India
57
Pusan National University (PNU), Pusan, Korea
58
Czech Technical University (CTU), Prague, Czech Republic
59
Physics Department, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, India
60
Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum für Informationstechnik Berlin (ZIB), Berlin, Germany
61
Indian Institute of Technology Indore, Indore, India
* e-mail: V.Friese@gsi.de
Received:
24
November
2016
Accepted:
1
March
2017
Published online:
23
March
2017
Substantial experimental and theoretical efforts worldwide are devoted to explore the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter. At LHC and top RHIC energies, QCD matter is studied at very high temperatures and nearly vanishing net-baryon densities. There is evidence that a Quark-Gluon-Plasma (QGP) was created at experiments at RHIC and LHC. The transition from the QGP back to the hadron gas is found to be a smooth cross over. For larger net-baryon densities and lower temperatures, it is expected that the QCD phase diagram exhibits a rich structure, such as a first-order phase transition between hadronic and partonic matter which terminates in a critical point, or exotic phases like quarkyonic matter. The discovery of these landmarks would be a breakthrough in our understanding of the strong interaction and is therefore in the focus of various high-energy heavy-ion research programs. The Compressed Baryonic Matter (CBM) experiment at FAIR will play a unique role in the exploration of the QCD phase diagram in the region of high net-baryon densities, because it is designed to run at unprecedented interaction rates. High-rate operation is the key prerequisite for high-precision measurements of multi-differential observables and of rare diagnostic probes which are sensitive to the dense phase of the nuclear fireball. The goal of the CBM experiment at SIS100 (
2.7--4.9 GeV) is to discover fundamental properties of QCD matter: the phase structure at large baryon-chemical potentials ( 
MeV), effects of chiral symmetry, and the equation of state at high density as it is expected to occur in the core of neutron stars. In this article, we review the motivation for and the physics programme of CBM, including activities before the start of data taking in 2024, in the context of the worldwide efforts to explore high-density QCD matter.
© SIF, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2017
