Reconstructing Hyperons with the PANDA Detector at FAIR

Hyperon production and the study of their properties is an important part of the physics programme of the future PANDA experiment at FAIR. Antihyperon-hyperon pairs will be produced in antiproton-proton collisions through the annihilation of at least one light antiquark-quark (u, d) pair and the creation of a corresponding number of antiquark-quark (s) over bars pairs. By measuring the decay products of the hyperons, spin observables such as the polarisation can be measured. Many hyperons have a long life-time which gives rise to final state particles originating from displaced vertices. A pattern recognition algorithm using information from the PANDA Straw Tube Tracker is extended to reconstruct not only the transversal, but also the longitudinal components of charged tracks. A Hough transform and a path finding method as tools to extract the longitudinal components are being developed.