Seminars

In memory of the scientist

On 26 February, a specialized seminar "Relativistic nuclear physics and polarization phenomena" was held at the Laboratory of High Energy Physics. It was held on the day of the 99th anniversary of Academician A.M.Baldin.

As the first speaker Alexander Malakhov highlighted, the seminar is named after A.M.Baldin, as well as the Laboratory and the street that leads to it. Next year, the 100th anniversary of Alexander Baldin will be celebrated, work on construction of a monument is already underway and a book will be published.

In his report "Jets and quarks at the NICA collider", Head of Department of VBLHEP A.I.Malakhov said that today, relativistic nuclear interactions are studied quite widely, with different theoretical prototypes. These are field theory, hydrodynamics, statistical physics and transport theory. Among them is A.M.Baldin's approach - similarity theory based on the conservation laws of four-dimensional momentum and quantum numbers. Alexander Malakhov spoke about the essence of the technique, how it was developed and how this approach can be applied at the NICA accelerator complex, in particular, for investigations of such objects as jets and quarks.

The speech included video fragments where A.M.Baldin talks about the relevance of studying processes in the energy of the Nuclotron (and today, the NICA complex). They promise more discoveries, in contrast to the high energies which the accelerators built at that time strived to. In the second video segment, Academician N.N.Bogolyubov praised the ability to study jets: "I think this is an extremely important result among the many results obtained by Alexander Mikhailovich".

The seminar was continued by senior researcher at VBLHEP Stepan Shimansky. He introduced A.M.Baldin as the founder of a new area in high energy physics - relativistic nuclear physics and also as Head of the Laboratory.

At the beginning of the report, an unusual photograph was shown that depicted Alexander Baldin on the right and Andrey Budker (as the staff members called Hersh Itskovich) from BINP SB RAS on the left (in photo). "Two BAMs" - this is how the speaker labeled the photo of two Academicians: with the one S.S.Shimansky had done his diploma work in Novosibirsk, the other had worked with him for many years in Dubna.

Afterwards, the speaker told about relativistic nuclear physics. It all started in 1970, when deuterons were first accelerated at the synchrophasotron. Flerov, a group of theorists including Matveev, Muradyan, Tavkhelidze and new theoretical ideas that had come up by that time played their role in further research. As a result, it was decided to construct the Nuclotron, to prepare a programme of physical research, the concept of quark-gluon plasma appeared. All this eventually resulted in development of the NICA Megascience Project.

At the end of his speech, S.S.Shimansky spoke about the role of A.M.Baldin in organizing a series of international conferences "Dubna-Deuteron", at which he was Chairman of the Organizing Committee, about the support of the initiative of young scientists in the organization of visiting summer schools of CYSS VBLHEP that were held on the islands of the Ivankovo Reservoir and other events. With regard to the forthcoming 100th anniversary, the speaker asked the Laboratory staff to share their memories and photos related to the name of Academician A.M.Baldin.

Galina MYALKOVSKAYA