On 28–30 November 2023, the Laboratory of High Energy Physics at JINR hosted the 11th Collaboration Meeting of the BM@N Experiment at the NICA Facility. Participants discussed plans, the status of the BM@N Experiment, and the results achieved since the 10th Collaboration Meeting in May.

The focus of the meeting was the analysis of the events of interactions of 3.8 GeV Xe nuclei with CsI target nuclei, identification of strange neutral particles, and charged mesons and nucleus fragments recorded during the experiment on a Xe ion beam at BM@N. The results of physical analysis of previously collected argon-nucleus interactions were reviewed. Special attention was paid to the discussion of the physics programme and the development of the experimental facility in preparation for the next run at BM@N.

JINR Vice-Director Vladimir Kekelidze opened the meeting: “The scientific physics programme at NICA has been successfully launched thanks to the work of the BM@N Collaboration, which finished a successful run collecting more than half a billion events. JINR is entering a new seven-year period. At the last meeting of the Committee of Plenipotentiaries of the Governments of the JINR Member States in Almaty, a new Seven-Year Plan for the Development of JINR in 2024-2030 was approved. An important part of the plan is the development programme for the NICA Project and particularly the BM@N Experiment, and we are hoping to achieve our goals. This is a new era for JINR”.

Collaboration Leader, Doctor of Physics and Mathematics Mikhail Kapishin delivered a report on the work of the collaboration, plans, and results achieved since the previous meeting. He informed the participants that during the Institutional Board held in the middle of September, two more organizations joined BM@N: Physical-Technical Insitute of the Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences and the National Research University Higher School of Economics. The BM@N Collaboration currently consists of 13 institutes and 206 participants from 5 countries.

Mikhail Kapishin reported on the progress made in optimising the algorithm for reconstructing particle tracks in the central and outer BM@N tracking system using the recently measured magnetic field map. In addition, a version of the experimental data reconstruction programme was prepared, and a complete reconstruction of the events, recorded in the run on a Xe ion beam, was done using the DIRAC System on the Tier-class MLIT Computing Cluster.

Mikhail Kapishin noted there is a chance to conduct an experimental run on a 2-3 GeV Xe ion beam in the autumn of 2024. Its possibility depends on the NICA Collider construction progress. A run on a heavier Bi ion beam requires further development of the central tracking system, namely the installation of additional silicon detector stations. It is also planned to commission a two-coordinate high granular neutron detector for measuring yields and collective neutron fluxes.

Deputy Head of the VBLHEP Scientific and Experimental Department of the Multi-Purpose Detector Semen Piyadin spoke about the installation of BM@N Detectors. Chief Engineer of the NICA Complex Evgeny Syresin spoke about the status of NICA, the Booster, and the Nuclotron.

On 28 November, the BM@N Institutional Board discussed organizational issues of cooperation.