Megascience projects on relativistic collisions of heavy nuclei with participation of MEPhI enter list of priorities of nuclear physics development in Europe
26.01.2017

Megascience projects on relativistic collisions of heavy nuclei with participation of MEPhI have entered the list of priorities of nuclear physics development in Europe. This decision has been made during the International forum of the Nuclear Physics European Collaboration Committee (NuPECC), held in January, 2017 in Darmstadt (Germany).

About 300 scientists, specializing in the fundamental research in nuclear physics, from more than 30 countries of the world, took part in the event. Russia was represented by scientists from MEPhI and other leading universities and scientific organisations.

Following the discussion, a long-term plan on the development of nuclear physics in Europe has been made, main directions of research and scientific projects for upcoming decades have been determined.

Among priority directions on the research of relativistic collisions of heavy nuclei there are megascience projects, in which MEPhI participates. Among them there are future facilities at FAIR accelerator complex (Darmstadt, Germany) and NICA collider (Dubna, Russia). Together with experiments in CERN at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), there are megascience experiments HADES in GSI (Darmstadt, Germany) and NA61/SHINE in CERN (Switzerland/France).

MEPhI has recently joined international collaborations HADES and NA61/SHINE by the initiative of MEPhI scientific group on the research of relativistic collisions of heavy nuclei under the supervision of the employee of the Department of condensed matter physics A.V.Taranenko.

As the Department Associate Professor I.V.Selyuzhenkov, who represented MEPhI at NuPECC forum, noted, the support of this projects by NuPECC is mostly justified by MEPhI participation, in particular, because thanks to the MEPhI group initiative a program of scanning on heavy nuclei energy of collisions was added to the NA61/SHINE project.

Further participation in megascience projects on relativistic collisions of heavy nuclei, included into the list of NuPECC priority directions, will guarantee a long-term prospect for MEPhI to occupy leading positions in this field and possibility to attract students and young scientists.