LYCCA is a core device for the HISPEC/DESPEC program, which is part of the NUSTAR collaboration within the major European nuclear physics project FAIR currently being constructed near Darmstadt, Germany. The precursor, LYCCA-0, has already been in use at the existing European large-scale accelerator facility GSI, which serves also as the basis for FAIR. The Swedish investment for LYCCA has been granted in 2010 by the Swedish Research Council via its Committee for Large Infrastructure, RFI-VR.

While waiting for FAIR beams 202x, LYCCA was installed and commissioned at the 10-MV Tandem accelerator of the University of Cologne, Germany. With the help of the workshop at the University of Cologne, LYCCA was turned into a highly pixelated (up to 24 x 1024 = 24576), 3π charged-particle detector system for reaction studies relevant for nuclear astrophysics, e.g. α+¹²C → 4α. 

LYCCA is an acronym for "Lund-York-Cologne CAlorimeter". 
PRESPEC  is an acronym for "Pre-HISPEC and Pre-DESPEC experiments at GSI".
HISPEC  is an acronym for "High-Resolution In-Flight SPECtroscopy".
DESPEC  is an acronym for "DEcay SPECtroscopy".
NUSTAR  is an acronym for "NUclear STtructure, Astrophysics, and Reactions".
FAIR  is an acronym for the new international "Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research". 

The main objective of LYCCA is to uniquely identify exotic nuclear reaction products by their mass A and charge Z. These nuclei are produced in nuclear reactions induced by relativistic radioactive ion beams. For PRESPEC, these beams are being delivered by the GSI Fragment Separator. For HISPEC/DESPEC, the beams are going to be provided by the new Super-FRS.  Typical kinetic energies of the reaction products of interest are some 100-300 MeV/u, which corresponds to some 30-40% of the speed of light. The identification of the exotic nuclei is based upon event-by-event time-of-flight, energy loss, and total energy measurements, in the final stage of the HISPEC set-up in conjunction with a magnetic spectrometer. 

LYCCA Collaboration:
D. Rudolph et al., Department of Physics, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
M.A. Bentley et al., Department of Physics, University of York, York, United Kingdom.
P. Reiter et al., Institut für Kernphysik, Universität zu Köln, Köln, Germany.
J. Gerl et al.,  Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung mbH (GSI), Darmstadt, Germany. 

Acknowledgements:
The following organisations are acknowledged for Swedish contributions to the LYCCA project:
 Vetenskapsrådet, Sweden.
 Crafoordska stiftelsen, Lund, Sweden.
 Fysiografiska Sällskapet i Lund, Lund, Sweden.