Moscow Region to get its own collider

MOSCOW. Yury Zaitsev for RIA Novosti

The attention of physicists worldwide is currently riveted on the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), which is operating the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The LHC is expected to become the main impetus and pinnacle of achievement in high-energy physics research; however, it is already clear that answers to many questions will not come via the LHC. For example, it will be impossible to observe the process of very dense nuclear material transition to a new state - quark-gluon plasma - a mixed phase existing in the first moments after the Big Bang. There is a theory that that was when quarks existed in a free state. Then they grouped together and protons and neutrons appeared. In the LHC, this process is skipped because the energy of the particles' interaction is too high.

Alexei Sisakyan, director of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) at the international scientific center in Dubna, says that this may be compared to boiling water. If we can see how water (heavy nuclei) changes into steam (quark-gluons) at 100 degrees, then at 1000 degrees, this process is invisible - it takes a fraction of a second for the water to evaporate and observing it is impossible.

Scientists hope to register the transition of quarks into protons and neutrons in the collider that is planned to be built in the Moscow-region town of Dubna. The new physical device has been named NIKA (a high-energy heavy ion collider). A one-of-a-kind accelerator complex will be created. It will consist of a cascade of four accelerators, one of which is already built and activated - the superconductive ion synchrotron-nuclotron. The collider developers intended for the particles to be accelerated in several of its coils in one direction, picking up more and more speed. In the final stage, they will travel in the opposite direction in the two coils. Collision points for particle beams are anticipated in several places along these coils. It is expected that free quarks will be seen during the time of their collision (currently quarks exist only in clusters of three) and it will be possible to observe the process of their attractive interaction with one another.

Scientists are counting on being able to use the new installation to research the properties of the transition of matter from one phase state to another, as well as the conditions associated with the transition to this phase (if indeed such a transition takes place), during which the nuclear and quark-gluon material may coexist. It is not improbable that such conditions currently exist in the cores of neutron stars.

In the NIKA collider, particles of the gold molecules nuclei will be collided, accelerated towards one another at energy of 5.5 gigaelectronvolts. Scientists will study the consequences of the collision with the aid of a Multi Purpose Detector (ÌÐD) installed at the "point of collision" of the beams. While the length of CERN's LDC is 27 kilometers, the NIKA is only 251 meters long. The basis for its design was the synchrophasotron built in Dubna back in 1957 - one of the largest charged-particle accelerators in the world.

It was specifically in the Soviet Union that the idea of building a collider was first aired. The first prototype was built in Novosibirsk and had a capacity of tens of gigaelectronvolts. This accelerator is still used in research.

Today in Dubna, the updating of the nuclotron is in full swing - the vacuum in the coil has been fundamentally improved; the cryogenic unit, which is the heart of the superconducting accelerator, has been fully renovated; the power system has been upgraded; modern diagnostic equipment is being installed and a new ion source is being made.

NIKA will be a one-of-a-kind world-class installation and will be of interest to other physics centers. The development of NIKA will enable the return of many scientists to Russia, particularly those young scientists who participated in the development of the LHC. The construction of modern experimental installations is impossible without detailed technical planning, for which qualified design engineers are needed. There was a mass exodus of such experts to the West when the Russian scientific community fell apart. Today, their high qualifications are again in demand in Russia.

1. Describe the collider operation as far as you can understand it.

2. Share some more facts about the collider development.