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NICA: spirit of the youth and experience of the elders

On 3 October, A.V.Shemchuk successfully defended his PhD thesis "System for measuring the magnetic field of superconducting quadrupole magnets of the NICA booster" at VBLHEP. The VBLHEP Dissertation Council unanimously voted to award Andrey Shemchuk the academic degree of Ph.D. in Engineering Science in the specialty "Physics of charged particle beams and accelerator technology".

The results of A.V.Shemchuk's research, included in the thesis, allowed him to carry out high-precision measurements of the magnetic fields of all superconducting quadrupole magnets of the Nuclotron booster and to implement the required amendment of the fields. This is one of the investigations that allowed launching the booster in a short time. Almost immediately after the launch, it was possible to obtain a circulating beam on the booster and afterwards, to inject it into the Nuclotron.

The successful implementation of the NICA project is largely due to the scientific activity of young employees. Development of the accelerator complex consists of several stages, such as the development of the injection complex, the construction of the booster accelerator and the construction of the collider. Young people make a decisive contribution to all of these investigations.

As a result, to date, an injection complex of heavy ions has been developed, the Nuclotron booster has been designed and put into operation, a long session with xenon ions and with physical data has been implemented and the collider ring is currently assembled.

One of the results of these investigations was the defense of PhD theses. In 2023-2024, four young employees successfully defended their PhD theses on the topic of the NICA project: A.V.Tuzikov "Injection of heavy ion beams into the superconducting booster synchrotron of the NICA accelerator complex", K.A.Levterov "Production of accelerated beams in the heavy ion injector of the NICA injection complex of VBLHEP JINR", M.M.Shandov "Amendment of the leading magnetic field of the NICA booster", A.V.Shemchuk "System for measuring the magnetic field of superconducting quadrupole magnets of the NICA booster".

On 24 October, V.A.Plotnikov is going to defend his PhD thesis, "Production of π⁺ and K⁺ mesons in argon-nuclear interactions at a beam energy of 3.2 AGeV in the BM@N experiment at the Nuclotron".

During the said period, a number of doctoral and PhD theses were defended on other topics. In this regard, I would like to state the efficicent work of the members of our dissertation council and especially, of Deputy Chairman S.A.Kostromin, Scientific Secretary V.A.Arefiev and Technical Secretary E.M.Khabarova.

VBLHEP Dissertation Council Chairman Alexander MALAKHOV,
photo by Igor LAPENKO