The Di-Electron Spectrometer HADES at GSI: a status report

The new High Acceptance Di-Electron Spectrometer HADES is presently being s et up and commissioned at GSI/Darmstadt. It is designed to the understandin g of both, in-medium properties of mesons as well as fundamental electro-ma gnetic properties of hadrons by means of electron pair spectroscopy. During 1999 the detector system will be gradually completed and the physics progr am will start. This contribution briefly recalls the design of the spectrometer, covering the toroidal super-conducting magnet and the main detector components: the RICH, four planes of low-mass drift chambers MDC, TOF and PreShower detecto rs. Emphasis is put on the latest results on detector performance studied d uring in-beam test experiments. The results proof that in the environment o f relativistic heavy ion collisions the combined electron identification ca pability of all detector prototypes satisfies the design values.