Measurement of associated charm production induced by 400 GeV/c protons

An important input for the interpretation of the measurements of the SHiP ex- periment is a good knowledge of the differential charm production cross section, including cascade production. This is a proposal to measure the associated charm production cross section, employing the SPS 400 GeV/c proton beam and a replica of the first two interaction lengths of the SHiP target. The detection of the produc- tion and decay of charmed hadron in the target will be performed through nuclear emulsion films, employed in an Emulsion Cloud Chamber target structure. In order to measure charge and momentum of decay daughters, we intend to build a mag- netic spectrometer using silicon pixel, scintillating fibre and drift tube detectors. A muon tagger will be built using RPCs. An optimization run is scheduled in 2018, while the full measurement will be performed after the second LHC Long Shutdown.