Measurement of the Spin--Dependence of the pbar p Interaction at the AD-Ring

An internal polarized hydrogen storage cell gas target is proposed for the AD--ring to determine for the first time the two total spin--dependent cross sections $\sigma_1$ and $\sigma_2$ at antiproton beam energies in the range from 50 to 200 MeV. The data will allow the definition of the optimum working parameters of a dedicated Antiproton Polarizer Ring (APR), which has recently been proposed by the PAX collaboration for the new Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) at GSI in Darmstadt, Germany. The availability of an intense beam of polarized antiprotons will provide access to a wealth of single-- and double--spin observables, thereby opening a new window to QCD transverse spin physics. The physics program proposed by the PAX collaboration includes a first measurement of the transversity distribution of the valence quarks in the proton, a test of the predicted opposite sign of the Sivers--function, related to the quark distribution inside a transversely polarized nucleon, in Drell--Yan (DY) as compared to semi--inclusive Deep Inelastic Scattering, and a first measurement of the moduli and the relative phase of the time--like electric and magnetic form factors $G_{E,M}$ of the proton.