Meridians of cooperation

On the development of the BM@N and SPD collaborations

Two working meetings on the experiments for the NICA megascience project were held at VBLHEP

The 15th BM@N (Baryonic Matter at Nuclotron) Collaboration Meeting is taking place from 14 to 16 October at the Veksler and Baldin Laboratory of High Energy Physics in a hybrid format. More than 130 specialists are discussing the latest research results of the collaboration and the development prospects of the project in the coming years.

Vice-Director of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Kekelidze gave an opening speech. He congratulated BM@N Collaboration Spokesperson, VBLHEP Chief Researcher Richard Lednicky on his 80th birthday, noting his significant contribution to high energy physics. “Coming from a brilliant scientific school, he is one of the founders of the correlation femtoscopy method, which makes him a true ‘classic scientist,'” the JINR Vice-Director emphasised.

In addition, Vladimir Kekelidze noted that in the seven years since its creation, the BM@N Collaboration has become one of the leaders in hot and dense baryonic matter research. “The BM@N Experiment continues to show convincing results, attracting increasing interest from the global scientific community,” he said.

Head of the VBLHEP JINR Scientific and Experimental Department of Baryonic Matter at Nuclotron Mikhail Kapishin discussed experiments planned to be conducted from 2027 to 2031. One of the main tasks for 2025-2026 is xenon beam energy scan at 3, 2.2, and 1.6 GeV per nucleon. An upgrade of the tracking system is planned for experiments with heavier bismuth ions. In particular, an additional silicon FSD detector station will be installed, a new high-granularity neutron detector will be added for measuring neutron yields and collective flow, and the acceptance of the ToF-400, the time-of-flight system, will be extended to low momenta.

In addition, the speaker discussed the prospects of research with polarised deuteron beams, which will require updating trigger detectors and tracking system elements. Such an upgrade of the facility will open up new opportunities for studying the polarisation of Λ-hyperons and the spin alignment of vector mesons in processes with polarised deuterons. Another important step for the development of the experiment will be a computing infrastructure upgrade. Plans include doubling the processing capacity for the hardware to process up to 2 billion events per physics run and increasing the data storage capacity by 3 petabytes.

Deputy Head of the VBLHEP JINR Scientific and Experimental Department of the Multi-Purpose Detector (MPD) Semyon Piyadin continued the plenary session with an update on the modernisation and installation of the BM@N detector systems. He shared that the facility’s main detecting elements were successfully installed in the experimental pavilion, and the installation of the central tracking system inside BM@N’s analysing magnet finished. In addition, the collaboration’s specialists conducted tests of all magnetic elements, mechanical drives, and the vacuum ion pipe. Semyon Piyadin emphasised that the launch of the fast beam extraction channel from the Nuclotron to NICA‘s collider and the subsequent configuration of the extraction channel channel are necessary conditions for the implementation of the physics programme of the BM@N Experiment.

The first day’s programme included eight talks on data analysis. The scientists discussed the results obtained in previous physics runs. Among the speakers were VBLHEP and MLIT JINR researchers: Ksenia Alishina, Alexander Zinchenko, Nikita Lashmanov, Genis Musulmanbekov, Petr Alekseev, Arkady Taranenko, Irina Zhavoronkova, and Mikhail Mamaev. At an Institutional Board meeting on 14 October, a group of employees from the Institute of Mechanics (IMech) of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences joined the collaboration.

As part of the second day’s scientific programme, the participants continued to review data analysis results and discussed issues related to the preparation and operation of the detectors of the BM@N Facility. A session on software will take place on the final day, 16 October. In total, the programme of the 15th meeting included more than 40 presentations covering various aspects of the BM@N Project.

On 20 - 23 October, VBLHEP hosted the 10th meeting of the international SPD Collaboration. Over 200 scientists and young specialists from around the world discussed progress on the experimental facility, physics programme and IT infrastructure development for the experiment.

The scientific programme opened with a report from Chairman of the SPD Collaboration Council and the leading researcher at the A.Alikhanyan National Scientific Laboratory (Armenia) Armen Tumasyan. In his address, he informed the participants about the latest changes to the Collaboration's Executive Board and the new responsible coordinators. In 2026, the senior researcher at the Laboratory of Nuclear Problems Amaresh Datta will assume the position of SPD Physics Programme Coordinator and Igor Denisenko (DLNP) and Evgeny Soldatov (NRNU MEPhI) will serve as his deputies.

Armen Tumasyan cited the expansion of the Collaboration's international membership as a key indicator of its increase and dynamic development. Shandong University (SDU) and the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei have recently joined the project. The SPD Collaboration now unites nearly 40 scientific organizations.

SPD Collaboration Co-Director Alexey Guskov emphasized that this meeting marks the 100th anniversary of the concept of spin. He recalled the fundamental significance of spin, first proposed as a term in 1925 by George Uhlenbeck and Samuel Goudsmit. "This concept has forever changed physics," SPD Director highlighted. "I am confident that spin will play a key role in new scientific discoveries for the next hundred years."

Alexey Guskov outlined the Collaboration's key priorities for 2025. The latter include concluding a contract for the magnet yoke, developing the infrastructure for the cryogenic system and producing a superconducting cable for the solenoid. He also reported that the PAC for Particle Physics, at its June meeting, highly praised the Collaboration's progress in preparing the initial phase of the experiment.

In 2025, the Collaboration participants presented about 40 papers at 15 international conferences. A significant achievement of their investigations with young specialists was the defense of 18 undergraduate and graduate theses on SPD.

A focus in the report was on strengthening international relations. A significant event was the preliminary approval of a three-year joint project with USTC to develop high-performance readout electronics for a time-of-flight (TOF) detector under the JINR-China grant programme. A memorandum of understanding is also expected to be signed soon with the B.I.Stepanov Institute of Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus.

Head of Sector of DLNP Igor Denisenko and the leading researcher at MEPhI Evgeny Soldatov reported on the preparation of the physics research programme. Head of Department of VBLHEP Alexander Korzenev presented the status of the experimental facility and plans for developing its key subsystems. The senior researcher at MLIT Danila Oleynik presented the SPD computing infrastructure.

Head of Sector of VBLHEP Viktor Smirnov and Deputy Chief Engineer at VBLHEP Konstantin Mukhin presented reports on preparations for the collider launch and the development of the engineering infrastructure of the NICA complex. Deputy Chief Scientific Secretary at JINR Alexey Zhemchugov spoke about the status and prospects of scientific and technical cooperation between JINR and China. The plenary session closed with reports by Fedor Ratnikov (HSE University), Artem Petrosyan (MLIT) and Sergey Vinogradov (LPI).

Throughout the week, the participants have discussed the current state of work on all subsystems of the facility, its electronics and software, as well as the physics research programme. Over 60 scientific reports were dedicated to these topics.

JINR Press Office