English

The future fixed-target program at the CERN SPS

Nuclear Experiment 2026-07-24 v1 High Energy Physics - Experiment

Abstract

The CERN Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) can currently accelerate heavy ions in the energy range from 13.5 up to 150 A GeV and deliver them to fixed-target experiments. It is the facility where Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) experimental studies began in 1986. After a first phase until 2000, with several fundamental discoveries made by a number of dedicated experiments, the physics program continued until today with the NA60 (dileptons, 2003-2004) and NA61 (hadronic observables, from 2009) experiments. As of today, a continuation of QGP studies, after the current shutdown of CERN accelerators, is foreseen, involving NA61 and a newly approved experiments, NA60+/DiCE. In this contribution, I will briefly describe the main achievements of the CERN SPS program, discuss the proposed new measurements and their impact on our knowledge of the QGP in the finite μB\mu_{\rm B} region of the QCD phase diagram.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.22328,
  title  = {The future fixed-target program at the CERN SPS},
  author = {Enrico Scomparin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.22328},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

6 pages, 4 figures, contribution to the proceedings of the Strangeness in Quark Matter 2026 International Conference