CASTOR - A DEDICATED DETECTOR FOR THE DETECTION OF CENTAUROS AND STRANGELETS AT THE LHC

We present a specialized detector system, CASTOR, which, as an integra l part of the ALICE experiment, will search for centauros and strangel ets in central Pb + Ph collisions at the LHC. CASTOR will cover the ve ry forward, baryon-rich pseudorapidity region 4.5 less than or equal t o eta less than or equal to 6.2 and will consist of a charged particle multiplicity detector, a photon multiplicity detector and a calorimet er with electromagnetic and hadronic sections. The physics motivation is presented, along with simulation results and the detector design. T he influence of the background on the identification of centauro-type events is discussed.