Design and commissioning of the GSI pion beam

We describe the design of the secondary pion beam-line installed at the SIS 18Tm synchrotron at GSI, Darmstadt, and discuss the commissioning results. The experiments were performed with proton and C-12 primary beams at several energies using beryllium production targets. Pion yields in a momentum range between 0.4 and 2.8 GeV/c were identified, At the highest primary beam energies of 3.5 GeV for proton and 2.0 A GeV for carbon ions, the latter beam produces the highest low-momentum pion yield while at momenta of 1.5 GeV/c the yields are comparable and at 2.8 GeV/c the proton beam is superior. A momentum resolution of around 0.5% is achieved and the time resolution (a) ranges from 100 to 15…