The event took place during the first commissioning of equipment of the irradiation station SOChI and the beam transportation channel at night of
22 – 23 December 2021.

During the works, the magnetic system of the channel was commissioned, the beam was transported to the SOCHi station where several detectors registered it, including the ionizing monitor at microchannel plates, thy luminiferous and scintillation detectors.

At the STC JINR meeting on 23 December, Director of the Institute Grigory Trubnikov noted this event in his report. “At the night of 23 December, the carbon beam with the energy of 3.2 MeV/nucleon was transported through the channel and reached the target. Thus, the SOCHi channel (Station Of Chip Irradiation) has been assembled and has started operating. This means that the first stage of ARIADNA – the infrastructure for applied research at NICA combining ion beams transportation channels – has practically launched,” the JINR Director commented on the event. Grigory Trubnikov also expressed hope that the first experiments, including with external partners, would begin the following year.

According to Head of the VBLHEP JINR Scientific and Experimental Department of Injection and Ring of the Nuclotron Alexey Tuzikov, VBLHEP installed equipment of the SOCHi station and the transportation channel in autumn 2021. Moreover, specialists modernised the initial part of the beam injection channel to the Booster, the branch of which is the SOCHi station.

The commissioning cycle at the SOCHi channel will be continued after the first joint run of two accelerators of the NICA complex, namely the Booster and the Nuclotron, is finished. The run is scheduled for January 2022.

The SOCHi station aims to irradiate microchips at ion beams extracted from the linear accelerator of heavy ions (HILac). The beam transportation channel leading to the SOCHi station is one of the channels for applied research being created within the NICA project.