The 44th meeting of the JINR Programme Advisory Committee for Particle Physics was held in the International Conference Hall on 14-15 December 2016.

Chairman of the PAC for Particle Physics Professor I.Tserruya reported on implementation of the recommendations of the previous meeting of the PAC. JINR Vice-Director Professor R. Lednický spoke about the resolution of the 118th session of the JINR Scientific Council and the decisions of the sessions of the Committee of Plenipotentiaries of the JINR Member States.

One of the most important items on the agenda was the discussion of the Seven-Year Plan for the Development of JINR for 2017-2023.

The PAC noted the clear statement of prospects and tasks of the NICA project, presented in a report of VBLHEP Director V.D.Kekelidze.

Deputy Director of the VBLHEP Accelerator Department A.Sidorin made a progress report on implementation of the Nuclotron-NICA project.

Several reports were devoted to specific areas: runs at the Nuclotron, development of the VBLHEP infrastructure, the MPD and the BM@N projects.

As it was noted in the recommendations, members of the PAC congratulated the Directorates of VBLHEP and JINR on signing of the contract for construction of buildings for NICA with the “Strabag” Group, as well as on the approval of funding for the mega science project by the Russian Federation.

The PAC heard a report of S.Kostromin on the infrastructure developments, including the Nuclotron. It was noted that in view of importance of the programme it is necessary to increase the staff by 30 percent to ensure the implementation of plans. TPAC members also noted the progress towards realization of the MPD project, including results of Monte-Carlo simulation presented in a report of V.Kolesnikov, as well as development of technological sites and technical elements for mass production of detectors. A report on the progress towards realization of the BM@N project presented by M.Kapishin was also highly appreciated.

The agenda of the meeting also included presentation of the scientific results obtained by the JINR groups in the LHC experiments. Young scientists from DLNP, LIT, BLTP and VBLHEP presented 27 poster presentations at the meeting of the PAC. A high level of the presented work was noted; the PAC chose a poster presentation of S.Vereschagin on development of TPC MPD/NICA readout electronics to be presented at the meeting of the JINR Scientific Council in February 2016.

On the second day, interesting scientific reports were presented: “First results of the NOvA project” (A.Olshevskiy) and “Precise measurement of charged-pion polarizability at COMPASS” (A.Guskov); the general discussion was also held. In addition to this, proposals for the agenda of the next PAC meeting were discussed and the recommendations of the PAC were adopted. In particular, experts welcomed renewal of the common infrastructure and changes in the working methods of JINR to make the NICA project attractive to scientists from major international research centres.

The next meeting of the PAC for Particle Physics will be held on 20-12 June 2016.

Galina Myalkovskaya,
Photo by Elena Puzynina