At PAC meetings

Spotlight on the NICA project

On 21-22 June, the 58th meeting of the Programme Advisory Committee for Particle Physics was held in the JINR Conference hall in a mixed format.

JINR Director Grigory Trubnikov addressed the participants with a welcoming speech. Chairman of the PAC for Particle Physics Itzhak Tserruya presented an overview of the implementation of the recommendations adopted at the previous meeting. JINR Vice-Director Vladimir Kekelidze presented information about the recommendations of the 133rd session of the Scientific Council (February 2023), the decisions of the Committee of Plenipotentiaries (March 2023) and the updated version of the Seven-Year Plan for the Development of the Institute to the participants.

A range of reports on the NICA megascience project started with a report on the implementation of the Nuclotron-NICA project by Deputy Head of the Accelerator Department A.O. Sidorin. The results of the session that was held from 20 September, 2022 to 3 February, 2023, were detailed.

"This is a unique time, probably, the Nuclotron has never accumulated so much in its entire history. Sessions, as a rule, were short, a month and a half," A.O.Sidorin commented, "Today, we have worked for more than six months. All the main units of the accelerator complex, the injection chains of the collider were put into operation and this complex worked out for the experiment. An absolutely fantastic and unexpected for me ARIADNA collaboration programme was complete, they worked in parallel with the BM@N experiment. A lot of experiments were carried out, the targets were changed almost every day.

The plans for further development are probably the most interesting - when we complete the assembly and start testing the collider. At present, it comes with several issues. First of all, the construction of the building for the collider has not been completed, so the installation of the cryomagnetic system will most likely be completed in April next year. And once that's done, we'll have a technology session. Perhaps at the end of next year we will be ready to carry out the first run with a beam at the collider. This is not yet an experimental work, not a set of statistics, this is a test of the entire system, designed to transfer the beam from the Nuclotron to the collider for injection. Additionally, we have huge plans to increase the intensity of the Nuclotron and to carry out further work on the BM@N experiment."

A report on the progress of the development of the VBLHEP infrastructure was presented by VBLHEP chief engineer N.N.Agapov. In particular, the problems that arose with the supply of equipment for the NICA Innovation Centre were noted, it was necessary to change suppliers and accordingly, documentation. Therefore, the construction of the Centre is postponed to 2024. Work on completion of the construction of the collider building is also currently postponed. A month ago, from the general contractor since 2015, the Austrian company STRABAG received a notification that it was impossible to carry out further activities under the contract due to sanctions restrictions. A new contractor will be selected this year, the completion of construction and testing of engineering systems is planned for the spring of 2024. At the same time, work is underway at a good pace on the cryogenic complex and the reconstruction of the GPP-1 electrical substation.

A report on the implementation of the MPD project was presented by the Spokesman of the collaboration V.G.Ryabov (PNPI). From 15 June to 15 September, the lobby of the MPD pavilion is closed for firefighting. From October until the end of the year, it is planned to cool the magnet to the temperature of liquid helium. In 2024, the magnetic field map will be measured and the detection systems will be installed step by step. Commissioning and start of data accumulation is scheduled for 2025.

The progress of work on the implementation of the BM@N project was presented by Head of the BM@N collaboration, Head of the Sector of VBLHEP M.N.Kapishin. It was noted that currently, 189 scientists from 10 scientific centres of Russia, Bulgaria, China participate in the collaboration and specialists from Kazakhstan joined the cooperation in May. The speaker presented the results of the BM@N experiment on the data storage during the fourth session, spoke about the plans for the upcoming experiments.

A report on the preparation of the technical design of the SPD detector was presented by Head of the Department of Colliding Beams of DLNP A.V.Guskov. "SPD is a facility that will be positioned at the second beam collision point of the NICA collider," the speaker said. "It is designed to study the spin structure of protons and deuterons in collisions of polarized beams. This is a modern experiment that well complements projects in this scientific field that are currently implemented in the world and are planned for implementation in Europe, China and the United States of America. At present, the implementation of the SPD is at the stage of finalizing the preparation of the technical project. The installation will be launched in two stages. And we hope that the first stage will be implemented three to four years after the launch of the collider."

Further on the agenda of the meeting, reports on scientific results obtained by JINR groups in experiments at the Large Hadron Collider were presented. The report on the ALICE experiment was presented by B.V.Batyunya. Information on physical results in the ATLAS experiment was reported by T.V.Lyubushkina. New results and current activities of the JINR group in the CMS experiment were presented by V.Yu.Karzhavin.

Reports on the projects ending in 2023 and proposals for their prolongation were presented: NA64 - speaker D.V.Peshekhonov, SCAN-3 - S.V.Afanasiev, BES-III - I.I.Denisenko, TAIGA - A.N.Borodin, JUNO - D.V.Naumov, NOvA/DUNE - L.D.Kolupaeva, Multifunctional Information and Computing Complex (MICC) - V.V.Korenkov.

New projects were proposed: "Mathematical methods, algorithms and software for simulation of physical processes and experimental facilities, processing and analysis of experimental data" - speaker S.V.Shmatov and participation in the AMBER project implemented at CERN - speaker A.V.Guskov.

13 posters of young scientists from VBLHEP, BLTP and DLNP were presented at the PAC meeting. The Committee chose a report by M.Shandov (VBLHEP) "The system for correcting the leading magnetic field of the NICA booster" for presentation at the next session of the Scientific Council in September, 2023.

The second day of the meeting was dedicated to the meeting with JINR Directorate. The report on the new structure of research topics and projects in the field of particle physics at the Laboratory of Theoretical Physics was presented by BLTP Director D.I.Kazakov. The PAC members also learnt about the written reports on the projects ending in 2023, PANDA and COMPASS.

The next meeting of the PAC for Particle Physics will be held on 22-23 January, 2024.

JINR Vice-Director Vladimir Kekelidze commented on the meeting of the PAC for our newspaper:

"We go through a very difficult time. This is due to the fact that there are travel restrictions, the logistics are complicated. And secondly, a number of former members of our committee, representatives of CERN, for example, cannot officially participate in the work of JINR. Nevertheless, there is a quorum: out of ten members of our committee, seven participate in the meeting - four in the hall and three online. So the meeting goes on as usual. The plans that we wanted to discuss are discussed.

Of course, the main topic is somehow related to our flagship project NICA. A.O.Sidorin's report on the status of the accelerator complex has just been presented. It must be said that a very great success has been achieved over the past year. The entire part of the accelerator complex, except for the collider and the beam output to the collider, has actually passed successful commissioning tests, the so-called fourth cycle. The cycle lasted quite a long time, almost 3500 hours; this is the longest session in the history of our accelerator complex. During this time, not only the main units of the accelerator complex were debugged (with the exception, I repeat, of the collider and the extraction beams to it), but all of them were worked out, tested, including the electron cooling system, vacuum systems of extracted beamlines, control systems, beam dynamics and so on. Their work is actually brought to the parameters that have been planned.

Moreover, a session was implemented within the framework of the NICA scientific programme at the BM@N facility. For the first time, this facility was assembled in a complete configuration and more than half a billion heavy ion collision events, namely a xenon beam with a fixed target consisting of cesium-iodine, were accumulated. The analysis of these data is today underway and we hope that a publication will be released soon.

As for the previous sessions of the BM@N collaboration, in an incomplete configuration, in the test mode, the facility accumulated events. The year before last, a technical session was held, but, nevertheless, the data of a physical experiment were accumulated. Just the other day, a European journal accepted an article based on the results of the previous session. So in fact, scientific data within the framework of the NICA programme has already begun to gain ground on the global scientific landscape.

As for international cooperation, the situation is not simple. A number of Member States such as Ukraine, the Czech Republic and Poland have withdrawn from JINR due to the political situation. And of course, the collaborations, in which institutions from these countries were seriously represented, have decreased. This is bad not only for us, but for the entire scientific community. But new participants come up, as they say, knock on the door. The next workshop of the MPD collaboration, the largest within the NICA project, will be held this autumn in Serbia. This is a significant event, for the colleagues that are not so easy to get to us will come to Serbia and it will also help to attract new participants."

Galina MYALKOVSKAYA,
photo by Igor LAPENKO