COMPASS experiment
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COMPASS (Common Muon and Proton Apparatus for Structure and Spectroscopy) is a fixed-target particle physics experiment at the Super Proton Synchrotron, a particle accelerator at the European Organization for Nuclear Reasearch (CERN).
There are several research projects underway at COMPASS:
- understanding the contribution of the gluons to the spin of the proton and other nuclei,
- production and investigation of exotic mesons,
- production and investigation of charmed mesons.
About 240 physicists work on the COMPASS experiment.
The experimental setup is described in the following picture:
[[1]]
COMPASS is a two-level magnetic spectrometer with calorimeters in both levels and particle identification in the first level. The homepage of the collaboration is [2].
A detailed description of the experiment can be found in the CERN courier, see [[3]].
![[1]](http://wwwcompass.cern.ch/Pictures/Layout-3D-1L.gif){kind=link}