In February, the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (INP SB RAS, Novosibirsk, Russia) joined the International SPD Collaboration at the NICA Collider. The parties signed an agreement providing for the specialists of the Novosibirsk Institute to participate in solving tasks aimed at ensuring the operation of the detector. This includes the engineering of a magnetic detector system and the creation of a particle identification system based on aerogel Cherenkov counters.

SPD Detector circuit

“We are very pleased that the INP SB RAS, one of our key longstanding partners who we share a long history of cooperation with, has joined the collaboration. Even before the agreement was signed, the INP SB RAS, which has unique experience in creating magnetic systems, had begun designing a superconducting magnet,” Co-Leader of the SPD NICA Collaboration, Deputy Director of the Laboratory of Nuclear Problems at JINR Alexey Guskov commented. He noted that the SPD Collaboration, established in 2021, now consists of about 400 participants representing more than 30 institutes worldwide.

SPD Collaboration Co-Leader Alexey Guskov

The SB RAS Institute of Nuclear Physics accumulated extensive experience in engineering magnetic detector systems. In particular, the Institute’s specialists created such equipment for the international PANDA Project at the German FAIR Accelerator Centre.

“The magnetic system is the most expensive and one of the most complicated parts of the detector. It is designed to provide a strong uniform magnetic field. Under the influence of a magnetic field, charged elementary particles deviate from rectilinear motion and move in an arc. The curvature of the arc depends on the mass, charge, and energy of the particle. By measuring it, we get information about the particle’s parameters,” an INP SB RAS senior researcher, Coordinator of the INP SB RAS Group in the SPD Collaboration Alexander Barnyakov explained. The magnetic system needs to be produced before most of other systems, as it will contain all the rest.

Coordinator of the INP SB RAS Group in the SPD Collaboration Alexander Barnyakov

The second task of the INP SB RAS in the SPD Collaboration is to create a particle identification system based on aerogel Cherenkov counters. Cherenkov ring detectors are designed to measure the angle of Cherenkov light emitted in a transparent medium by a charged particle. In addition, the agreement states that scientists from the Institute of Nuclear Physics will participate in software development and experimental data analysis.

“The NICA Collider will work at energies from the lowest possible up to approximately 27 GeV for the collision of polarised beams. This will give us a unique opportunity to scan this entire range and explore how the manifestation of various spin-dependent effects alters due to changes in the collision energy. These studies can make a major contribution to the development of the strong interaction theory and understanding of its nature,” Alexey Guskov said.

The status and updated technical design of the SPD Experiment were presented on 22 January 2024 at the 59th meeting of the JINR Programme Advisory Committee for Particle Physics. Among the changes in the technical project, Collaboration Leader Alexey Guskov highlighted the detector’s increased size and weight, improvement of the maintenance and transportation system, and modernisation of aerogel detectors. Several detector systems designed for the first SPD configuration were upgraded.