On 24 – 27 April, at the Laboratory of High Energy Physics JINR, the fourth SPD Collaboration meeting is being held. It has become the second one held offline. Participants are discussing the progress in the preparation of the SPD Experiment at the NICA Complex and various aspects of the Collaboration’s work.

VBLHEP Chief Researcher Richard Lednický opened the meeting with a welcoming address. “Despite the difficult circumstances that arose during the period of COVID restrictions, the Collaboration continues working at a high level. During two difficult years, three meetings have been held, the first version of the experiment’s technical design report has been drafted,” he highlighted. Richard Lednický also added that the current meeting is taking place shortly after the end of the technical run at all the main accelerators of the NICA Complex, which successfully worked for a record number of hours. A significant event was the actual start of the first physical experiment at the complex as participants of the BM@N Experiment got more than half a billion events.

Leaders of the SPD Collaboration Victor Kim (PNPI) and Alexey Guskov (JINR) presented news of the Collaboration and results achieved since the previous meeting held in October 2022. One of the main achievements of the Collaboration is the approval of the first version of the SPD experiment technical design report (TDR) at the 57th meeting of the JINR Programme Advisory Committee for Particle Physics. Members of the Committee recommended to the JINR Directorate to appoint an advisory committee for detectors who would give a detailed evaluation of the TDR SPD. Moreover, the Committee supported the incusion of the SPD Experiment into the Seven-Year Plan for the Development of JINR for 2024 – 2030. PAC Members also approved the established priorities in the fields of particle physics and relativistic heavy ion physics. The SPD Collaboration is entering a new phase that requires consolidation of our efforts,” Victor Kim, Head of the Department of High Energy Physics of PNPI of NRC “Kurchatov Institute” and one of the SPD Collaboration leaders, highlighted.

In addition, Chairman of the Collaboration Council Egle Tomasi-Gustafson spoke at the event. The number of reports and materials about the experiment presented at conferences has increased. Open scientific grants contribute to the active development of the SPD Collaboration. In addition, the SPD Experiment has been included in the JINR Postdoc Programme. “SPD has become a close-knit and recognisable Collaboration,” with these words Egle Tomasi-Gustafson described the current status of the SPD team. She also presented proposals for the development and strengthening of the cooperation within the Collaboration. The reports presented on the first day of the meeting emphasised the general policy of expanding the SPD Collaboration.

During the current meeting, participants of the Collaboration will discuss the status of work on the subsystems of the facility, electronics and software of the experiment. The physical programme of the experiment and modeling will be discussed. The next meeting of the Collaboration is scheduled in Samara in October this year.