Charm Physics Performance Studies for PANDA

Abstract

The study of the charmonium (cbar c) system is a powerful tool to understand the strong interaction. In pbar p annihilations studied with PANDA, the mass and width of the charmonium state, such as h_c, will be measured with an excellent accuracy, determined by the very precise knowledge of the momentum, p, beam resolution (dp/p=10e(-4)-10e(-5)) and not limited by the resolution of the detector. The analysis of h_c demonstrates the feasibility to accurately determine a specific final state in the spectrum of charmed mesons. The preliminary background analysis of the pbar p -> pi0 pi0 pi0 decay competing with a signal channel pbar p -> h_c -> eta_c + gamma -> (pi0 + pi0 + eta) + gamma is under control. A comparison of three decay modes of charmonium h_c via the electromagnetic transition is presented