On 31 January, Academician-Secretary of the Physics Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) Vitaly Kveder and Director of the RAS Institute of Solid State Physics Alexander Levchenko visited the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research. The guests met with the Directorate of the Joint Institute and Scientific Leader of the Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions at JINR Yuri Oganessian and toured the NICA Accelerator Complex and the Superheavy Element Factory. The main topic of the discussion with the JINR Directorate was an upcoming Russian federal programme aimed at studying the fundamental properties of matter.

JINR Scientific Leader, RAS Academician Victor Matveev commented on the meeting, noting that the Joint Institute has a consolidating role in developing the draft of the programme. “The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research implements megascience projects on its territory, it is open for collaboration and is already involving partners in them. This provides new opportunities to make extensive use of the unique facilities created in Dubna for all interested parties, including universities, leading institutions of the Academy of Sciences, and other organizations of the Institute’s Member States and partner countries,” Victor Matveev said.

The JINR Scientific Leader noted that the 300th anniversary of RAS was widely celebrated in 2024. Therefore, general meetings took place at all branches of the Academy, including the RAS Physics Department, to summarise the work of past 25-30 years and outline priority areas of both fundamental and applied research meant to ensure the scientific and technological independence of the Russian Federation. In addition, during the visit of RAS President Gennady Krasnikov to JINR in November, the parties discussed the development of a prospective programme for studying the fundamental properties of matter, in which JINR will play a key role. “The programme is an initiative of the Physics Department. Currently, the Department and the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences pay a lot of attention to its development,” Victor Matveev said.

In addition, participants of the meeting with Vitaly Kveder and Alexander Levchenko discussed the expansion of cooperation in condensed matter physics, namely, the development of a user programme for the IBR-2 Pulsed Reactor, the operation of which will resume at the Laboratory of Neutron Physics at JINR this year.

Another issues included scientific personnel training for JINR and the Member States, along with the necessity and value of involving young researchers in creating large scientific facilities and working at them.

One of the key topics of discussion was the FLNR JINR work on the search for elements 119 and 120 of the Mendeleev’s Periodic Table. It was decided to prepare a presentation on the progress in superheavy elements for the next meeting of the Physics Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Victor Matveev explained that the discovery of new chemical elements of the Periodic Table would make it possible to qualitatively check how relativistic electron motion in superheavy nuclei affects the periodic law. “We expect that the chemical properties of the discovered heavy elements may depend on their number. We used to be certain that an element is a metal or a noble gas, but now the discovered elements may turn out to have properties in between these qualitative boundaries,” the JINR Scientific Leader commented.

Director of the Institute Grigory Trubnikov, Vice-Directors Sergey Dmitriev and Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Kekelidze took part in the meeting in Yuri Oganessian’s office on behalf of JINR.

During the visit, Vitaly Kveder and Alexander Levchenko got acquainted in detail with the progress of the creation of the NICA Collider at the Laboratory of High Energy Physics and research conducted at the Superheavy Element Factory at the Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions.