SpecMAT is an active target, which will be used for reactions studies with very weak radioactive beams. The main part of the detector is a time-projection chamber (TPC), with a highly-granulated gaseous detector based on the Micro Mesh Gaseous Structure technology (MICROMEGAS) and a cylindrical electric-field shaper.
This detector will be used to collect the 3D tracks and kinematics of a reaction on an event-by-event basis. During an experiment, the inner volume of the TPC will be filled with a gas mixture suitable to the studied case, with the nuclei of the gas atoms serving as target of the reaction of interest. An array of 45 CeBr3 scintillation detectors insensitive to the magnetic field will be installed around the active target to perform detailed gamma-ray spectroscopy of the nuclear states populated in transfer reactions