https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-022-10346-5
Regular Article - Experimental Physics
The SHiP experiment at the proposed CERN SPS Beam Dump Facility
1
Faculty of Physics, Sofia University, Sofia, Bulgaria
2
Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María and Centro Científico Tecnológico de Valparaíso, Valparaiso, Chile
3
Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
4
LAL, Univ. Paris-Sud, CNRS/IN2P3, Université Paris-Saclay, Orsay, France
5
LPNHE, IN2P3/CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Université Paris Diderot, 75252, Paris, France
6
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
7
Physikalisches Institut, Universität Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
8
Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
9
Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH (KFA), Jülich, Germany
10
Institut für Physik and PRISMA Cluster of Excellence, Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz, Mainz, Germany
11
Universität Siegen, Siegen, Germany
12
Sezione INFN di Bari, Bari, Italy
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Sezione INFN di Bologna, Bologna, Italy
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Sezione INFN di Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy
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Sezione INFN di Napoli, Naples, Italy
16
Laboratori Nazionali dell’INFN di Gran Sasso, L’Aquila, Italy
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Aichi University of Education, Kariya, Japan
18
Kobe University, Kobe, Japan
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Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan
20
College of Industrial Technology, Nihon University, Narashino, Japan
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Toho University, Funabashi, Chiba, Japan
22
Physics Education Department & RINS, Gyeongsang National University, Jinju, South Korea
23
Gwangju National University of Education, Gwangju, South Korea
24
Jeju National University, Jeju, South Korea
25
Korea University, Seoul, Korea
26
Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon-si, Gyeong Gi-do, South Korea
27
University of Leiden, Leiden, The Netherlands
28
LIP, Laboratory of Instrumentation and Experimental Particle Physics, Lisbon, Portugal
29
Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), Dubna, Russia
30
Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEP) NRC “Kurchatov Institute“, Moscow, Russia
31
Institute for Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences (INR RAS), Moscow, Russia
32
P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute (LPI RAS), Moscow, Russia
33
National Research Centre “Kurchatov Institute“, Moscow, Russia
34
National University of Science and Technology “MISiS“, Moscow, Russia
35
Institute for High Energy Physics (IHEP) NRC “Kurchatov Institute“, Protvino, Russia
36
Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute (PNPI) NRC “Kurchatov Institute“, Gatchina, Russia
37
St. Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU), St. Petersburg, Russia
38
National Research Nuclear University (MEPhI), Moscow, Russia
39
Skobeltsyn Institute of Nuclear Physics of Moscow State University (SINP MSU), Moscow, Russia
40
Yandex School of Data Analysis, Moscow, Russia
41
Institute of Physics, University of Belgrade, Serbia
42
Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
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Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
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European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva, Switzerland
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University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
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École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland
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Physik-Institut, Universität Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland
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Middle East Technical University (METU), Ankara, Turkey
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Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey
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H.H. Wills Physics Laboratory, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
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STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Didcot, UK
52
Imperial College London, London, UK
53
University College London, London, UK
54
University of Warwick, Warwick, UK
55
Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Kyiv, Ukraine
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Università di Bari, Bari, Italy
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Università di Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy
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Università di Napoli “Federico II“, Naples, Italy
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Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), Moscow Region, Russia
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Consorzio CREATE, Naples, Italy
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Università della Basilicata, Potenza, Italy
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Università di Napoli Parthenope, Naples, Italy
cc
Antonia.Di.Crescenzo@cern.ch
ex
Richard.Jacobsson@cern.ch
Received:
16
December
2021
Accepted:
18
April
2022
Published online:
26
May
2022
The Search for Hidden Particles (SHiP) Collaboration has proposed a general-purpose experimental facility operating in beam-dump mode at the CERN SPS accelerator to search for light, feebly interacting particles. In the baseline configuration, the SHiP experiment incorporates two complementary detectors. The upstream detector is designed for recoil signatures of light dark matter (LDM) scattering and for neutrino physics, in particular with tau neutrinos. It consists of a spectrometer magnet housing a layered detector system with high-density LDM/neutrino target plates, emulsion-film technology and electronic high-precision tracking. The total detector target mass amounts to about eight tonnes. The downstream detector system aims at measuring visible decays of feebly interacting particles to both fully reconstructed final states and to partially reconstructed final states with neutrinos, in a nearly background-free environment. The detector consists of a 50
long decay volume under vacuum followed by a spectrometer and particle identification system with a rectangular acceptance of 5 m in width and 10 m in height. Using the high-intensity beam of 400
protons, the experiment aims at profiting from the 
protons per year that are currently unexploited at the SPS, over a period of 5–10 years. This allows probing dark photons, dark scalars and pseudo-scalars, and heavy neutral leptons with GeV-scale masses in the direct searches at sensitivities that largely exceed those of existing and projected experiments. The sensitivity to light dark matter through scattering reaches well below the dark matter relic density limits in the range from a few 
up to 100 MeV-scale masses, and it will be possible to study tau neutrino interactions with unprecedented statistics. This paper describes the SHiP experiment baseline setup and the detector systems, together with performance results from prototypes in test beams, as it was prepared for the 2020 Update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics. The expected detector performance from simulation is summarised at the end.
© The Author(s) 2022
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