The COMPASS experiment at CERN - Prospects for CHARM and structure function measurements

The COMPASS experiment at CERN is aimed at the study of the nucleon spin structure and hadron spectroscopy. It attempts a measurement of the gluon polarization around x(g) similar or equal to 0.1 with a precision better than delta(Delta g/g) < 0.1. The experiment uses muo-production of open charm and correlated high-p(T) hadron pairs to tag the photon-gluon fusion process. In parallel COMPASS will perform also a rich spin-physics program in polarized DIS (muon program). The hadron physics program covers studies of pion and kaon polarizabilities in Primakoif scattering, glueballs and hybrid searches in the gluon rich central production, studies of charmed hadron production and (semi-leptonic and leptonic) decays. COMPASS uses a double forward spectrometer for best acceptance and momentum resolution. Both spectrometers are equipped with RICH detectors, electromagnetic and hadronic calorimeters, and muon walls for particle identification.