Particle identification in the PHENIX experiment at RHIC (present and future)

The PHENIX (Nucl. Instr. and Meth. A 499 (2003)) detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, BNL is designed to perform a broad study of A–A, p–A and p–p collisions to investigate nuclear matter under extreme conditions. The charged particle identification is currently provided for kaons and pions to a momentum of 2.4 GeV/c and protons to 5 GeV/c. These limits would be greatly extended by the now under construction Aerogel Threshold Cherenkov detector (refractive index n=1.012).