The G.I. Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics SB RAS is hosting a workshop for the international team collaborating on the PANDA experiment. More than 70 scientists from Russia, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, France, Austria will take part in the event that will end on September 8.
The PANDA experiment (antiProton ANnihilation at DArmstadt) is a key project of the European Center for the Study of the Physics of Antiprotons and Ions (FAIR). FAIR is located at the Helmholtz Heavy Ion Research Center. The complexity of the PANDA experiment is comparable to the ATLAS and ALICE experiments at the Large Hadron Collider. Its implementation requires unique conditions. Achieving those conditions is the most complicated task in accelerator and detector physics. Overall, 450 scientists from 17 countries are participating in the PANDA experiment. Novosibirsk is represented by researchers from the Institute of Nuclear Physics SB RAS and NSU.
Novosibirsk State University officially joined the experiment in 2015. The NSU Laboratory of Nucleon-Antinucleon Interactions is a member of the Interdisciplinary Center for Elementary Particle Physics and Astrophysics. Some of the staff are directly involved in preparation for the PANDA experiment. They are creating a detector on the HESR (high energy storage ring) for the subsequent precision (high-precision) study of antiproton-proton annihilation and the reactions of antiprotons with nuclei.
Pavel Logachev, Director of the Institute of Nuclear Physics SB RAS, described the project, "PANDA, is one of the promising directions for studying one of the unknowns in nuclear physics, which will use high-energy beams of antiprotons. The launch is planned by 2023. Currently, the full development of parts of the large complex and the accelerator are in full swing. Russia is participating in these efforts that includes our Institute."
The Institute of Nuclear Physics is participating in the development and creation of three PANDA project systems: a central solenoidal superconducting magnet that will measure impulses of charged particles emitted from the target by an antiproton beam; dipole magnet of the front spectrometer, which is designed to measure the momentum of particles emitted from the target forward; a detector of Cerenkov rings based on airgel.
According to Alexander Barnyakov, Senior Research Fellow at the NSU Laboratory of Hadron Interaction Physics and Institute of Nuclear Physics SB RAS., "Particles will fly through the airgel. It will help to register and identify the particles that will be produced in the process of interaction of the antiproton with the target. Airgel consists of SiO2 (quartz) and air. An important parameter for airgel is transparency. I will not be compromising my soul to say that Novosibirsk produces an airgel with the best transparency in the world, it has minimal dispersion. For the PANDA experiment, we use a new technique - a block is synthesized from two or three layers of airgel, with the index of refraction in the layers selected in such a way as to improve the accuracy of particles by an order of magnitude. Now we are developing a prototype system and testing the technology for manufacturing airgel."
