This paper will discuss the design and construction of BESIII [1], which is designed to study physics in the τ-charm energy region utilizing the new high luminosity BEPCII double ring e + ecollider [2]. The expected performance will be given based on Monte Carlo simulations and results of cosmic ray and beam tests. In BESIII, tracking and momentum measurements for charged particles are made by a cylindrical multilayer drift chamber in a 1 T superconducting solenoid. Charged particles are identified with a time-of-flight system based on plastic scintillators in conjunction with dE/dx (energy loss per unit pathlength) measurements in the drift chamber. Energies of electromagnetic showers are measured by a CsI(Tl) crystal calorimeter located inside the solenoid magnet. Muons are identified by arrays of resistive plate chambers in the steel magnetic flux return. The level 1 trigger system, Data Acquisition system and the event filter system based on networked computers will also be described.

There has recently been a dramatic renewal of interest in hadron spectroscopy and charm physics. This renaissance has been driven in part by the discovery of a plethora of charmonium-like XYZ states at BESIII and B factories, and the observation of an intriguing proton-antiproton threshold enhancement and the possibly related X(1835) meson state at BESIII, as well as the threshold measurements of charm mesons and charm baryons. We present a detailed survey of the important topics in tau-charm physics and hadron physics that can be further explored at BESIII during the remaining operation period of BEPCII. This survey will help in the optimization of the data-taking plan over the coming years, and provides physics motivation for the possible upgrade of BEPCII to higher luminosity.

Using e + e − collision data corresponding to a total integrated luminosity of 12.9 fb −1 collected with the BESIII detector at the BEPCII collider, the exclusive Born cross sections and the effective form factors of the reaction e + e − → Ξ − Ξ+ are measured via the single baryon-tag method at 23 center-of-mass energies between 3.510 and 4.843 GeV. Evidence for the decay ψ(3770) → Ξ − Ξ+ is observed with a significance of 4.5σ by analyzing the measured cross sections together with earlier BESIII results. For the other charmonium(-like) states ψ(4040), ψ(4160), Y (4230), Y (4360), ψ(4415), and Y (4660), no significant signal of their decay to Ξ − Ξ+ is found. For these states, upper limits of the products of the branching fraction and the electronic partial width at the 90% confidence level are provided.

Abstract:Data sets were collected with the BESIII detector at the BEPCII collider at the center-of-mass energy of Author's Copy scattering events, the integrated luminosities of the two data sets are measured to be (44.49 ± 0.02 ± 0.44) pb −1 and (2916.94 ± 0.18 ± 29.17) pb −1 , respectively, where the first error is statistical and the second error is systematic.

The number of J/ψ events collected with the BES detector at the BEPC from June 12 to July 28, 2009 is determined to be (225.3±2.8)×10 6 using J/ψ →inclusive events, where the uncertainty is the systematic error and the statistical one is negligible.