On 13 December, senior researchers of the JINR Laboratory of High Energy Physics Alexey Aparin and Maria Patsyuk spoke at an all-institute seminar at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Ministry of Energy of the Republic of Kazakhstan (RSE INP). The scientists from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research spoke about the results obtained by their research groups in two experiments and invited colleagues from Almaty to jointly participate in several projects.

Photo: © https://inp.kz/ru

Alexey Aparin presented to the RSE INP staff the latest results of the STAR experiment, one of the two main experiments at the RHIC polarized proton and heavy ion collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory (USA). The report noted the capabilities of the EIC experimental complex, also being designed at BNL, for precision studies of nuclei and protons and the development of new accelerator and detector technologies using big data analysis methods.

Continuing with the EIC, Maria Patsyuk elaborated on the history of the development of the DIRC Cherenkov radiation detector for identifying charged particles, which will be used at this accelerator complex. In addition, Maria Patsyuk spoke about the SRC experiment at the BM@N facility of the NICA megascience project and the scientific results of this experiment.

At the end of the seminar, an in-depth discussion of possible joint activities of INP and JINR took place. There were discussions on measuring the radiation resistance of a lens for the DIRC detector with the use of the INP WWR-K reactor.

As Alexey Aparin said, the seminar was held at the invitation of colleagues from Kazakhstan who wished to learn in more detail about JINR’s participation in external experiments.

“We told our colleagues from Kazakhstan about several projects that were promising from our point of view: about the work carried out at the NICA complex as part of the SRC project at BM@N, and provided information on several more colliders that are now planned for construction in the United States and in China. We discussed what contribution we could make by working together within common projects,” commented Alexey Aparin. Since 2017, the scientist has been the scientific advisor of five students at Kazakhstan universities. Currently, a postgraduate student from Kazakhstan is involved in Alexey Aparin’s group in the STAR experiment.

As for participation in the NICA megascience project, today the RSE INP is part of the MPD and SPD collaborations. Several JINR employees and postgraduate students from Kazakhstan take part in the BM@N collaboration.

Nurzhan Saduyev, Deputy Director General for Science at RSE INP, and Magjon Aitkulov, leading researcher at the INP Neutron Research Laboratory attended the seminar. An online broadcast was organized for students of Al-Farabi Kazakh National University.