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HADES is a versatile magnetic spectrometer aimed at studying dielectron production in pion, proton and heavy-ion induced collisions. Its main features include a ring imaging gas Cherenkov detector for electron-hadron discrimination, a tracking system consisting of a set of 6 superconducting coils producing a toroidal field and drift chambers and a multiplicity and electron trigger array for additional electron-hadron discrimination and event characterization. A two-stage trigger system enhances events containing electrons. The physics program is focused on the investigation of hadron properties in nuclei and in the hot and dense hadronic matter. The detector system is characterized by an 85 % azimuthal coverage over a polar angle interval from 18• to 85• , a single electron efficiency of 50 % and a vector meson mass resolution of 2.5 %. Identification of pions, kaons and protons is achieved combining time-of-flight and energy loss measurements over a large momentum range. This paper describes the main features and the performance of the detector system.

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Results are presented of a two-pion interferometry (HBT) analysis in Pb+Au collisions at 40, 80, and 158 AGeV. A detailed study of the Bertsch-Pratt HBT radius Preprint submitted to Elsevier Science 26 January 2018parameters has been performed as function of the mean pair transverse momentum k t and in bins of the centrality of the collision. From these results we extract model dependent information about the space-time evolution of the reaction. An investigation of the effective volume of the pion emitting system provides an important tool to study the properties of thermal pion freeze-out.