Happy New Year 2018 !

DLNP Directorate New Year Report on 26.12.2017

  Dmitri Naumov, DLNP Deputy Director for Science, speaks about the laboratory advances in 2017:  

CNNP 2017 - Oleg Smirnov - "Geoneutrinos: an experimental status and prospects"

On October 15-21, 2017, Catania hosted the Conference on Physics of Neutrino and Nuclear Physics (CNNP 2017), organized together by the National Institute of Nuclear Physics, the National Laboratory of the South and the Faculty of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Catania (Clementina Agui and Francesco Cappucello chairs). The main goal of the conference was to promote collaboration among scientists working in the field of nuclear physics, neutrino physics, astrophysics and dark matter physics, for discussion of experiments and theoretical concepts in which aspects of nuclear physics are particularly of interest. Forty-four reports from world leading experts in these fields were made during the conference. Russia was represented by Oleg Smirnov, an employee of our laboratory,  with a report "Geoneutrinos: experimental status and prospects."

Tunka-Rex Experiment

Dmitry Kostyunin speaks about the Tunka-Rex experiment, an antenna array at the Tunka Astrophysical Complex, Irkutsk Region. 

LHC on Holiday after Finishing the 2017 Data-Taking Period

On 26 November the 2017 data taking period ended at the Large Hadron Collideг. In the last two weeks the LHCb detector was involved in experiments on collision of protons with neon atoms. Since neon atoms were not accelerated, their collisions with protons can be treated as bombardments of a fixed target. The process of this kind imitates collisions of high-energy cosmic rays with the upper layers of the Earth’s atmosphere. The new experiment was unique in that two types of collision occurred in the collider, namely, low-energy proton–proton collisions and proton collisions with almost fixed neon atoms. Experimenters discriminated these interactions in the on-line mode by the position of the point from which muons and antimuons escaped. The proton–proton collisions proceeded at the center of the detector, while the proton–neon collisions were shifted by a few tens of centimeters. In 2015 and 2016, similar experiments were conducted at the LHCb by injecting “fixed” helium and argon in the accelerator tube, but joint data gathering from two types of collision was not performed. The LHCb collaboration site reports that now it was the first time that the same detector was used to simultaneously take data on two entirely different collision modes, the collider mode (proton–proton collisions) and the fixed-target mode (proton–neon collisions). A traditional shutdown of the collider for maintenance and improvements to the detector will last until April 2018.

JINR Prizes for Young Scientists

Our congratulations to Aleksandr Antoshkin who took the second place in the contest “JINR Prize for Young Scientists”, section “Experimental Research”.  

BAIKAL Collaboration Workshop

The workshop on the BAIKAL-GVD project has been held at DLNP on 28 November–1 December 2017.  Фото из Галереи

IceCube Collaboration Release

A First Look at How the Earth Stops High-Energy Neutrinos in Their Tracks   Neutrinos are abundant subatomic particles that are famous for passing through anything and everything, only very rarely interacting with matter. About 100 trillion neutrinos pass through your body every second. Now, scientists have demonstrated that the Earth stops very energetic neutrinos—they do not go through everything. These high-energy neutrino interactions were seen by the IceCube detector, an array of 5,160 basketball-sized optical sensors deeply encased within a cubic kilometer of very clear Antarctic ice near the South Pole. IceCube’s sensors do not directly observe neutrinos, but instead measure flashes of blue light, known as Cherenkov radiation, emitted by muons and other fast-moving charged particles, which are created when neutrinos interact with the ice, and by the charged particles produced when the muons interact as they move through the ice. By measuring the light patterns from these interactions in or near the detector array, IceCube can estimate the neutrinos’ directions and energies.

JINR Cloud Technologies in Neutrino Experiments

On 11 November 2017, a joint workshop of the DLNP experimenters and LIT specialists was held to discuss the use of JINR computer resources in neutrino experiments conducted by our laboratory.  Oleg Samoilov (DLNP) shared his experience of using LIT clouds in this work. Nilolai Kutovsky (LIT) and Nikita Balashov (LIT) talked about the development of the cloud technologies and their use in the DLNP neutrino programme. The status of the CSNP (Computing Support of Neutrino Programme) initiative group after the year of work was discussed.  A new liquid-cooled server prototype proposed by the IMMERS Company aroused great interest.

Shooting of a documentary film about JINR

The First Channel started shooting a popular-science film about JINR. On Friday 17 November 2017 the film crew visited out laboratory. {phocagallery view=categories|categoryid=142}

Academician V.A. Matveev is awarded the Order “For Services to the Fatherland” III degree

By the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation of 2 November 2017 No. 531, Academician V.A. Matveev, Director of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, is awarded the Order “For Services to the Fatherland” III degree for the great contribution to the development of science, education, and training of skilled specialists and many-year dedicated work.    The Dzhelepov Laboratory of Nuclear Problems congratulates Viktor Anantolyevich on being awarded this high state order and the rank of Officer of the French National Order of Merit! The Order “For Services to the Fatherland” is a state decoration of the Russian Federation awarded for outstanding contributions to the state associated with the strengthening of Russian statehood, social and economic development of the state, advances in culture and arts, sports, peace, friendship and cooperation between nations, and for contributions to the defence of the state. Itsmottois “Benefit, Honour, Glory”.   The insignia of the Officer of the National Order of Merit was conferred on V.A. Matveev in the French Embassy of France in Moscow on 31 October 2017. The National Order of Merit was established by the Decree of the President of France General Ch. de Gaulle of 3 December 1963 and replaced numerous ministerial orders of merit. It can be awarded to French citizens as well as foreign nationals for distinguished civilian and military merits. The order has five classes: Grand Cross, Grand Officer, Commander, Officer, and Knight.

Vadim Aleksandrovich Bednyakov turns 60

October 31, 2017 marks the 60th birthday of Prof. V.A. Bednyakov, Director of the Dzhelepov Laboratory of Nuclear Problems, Doctor of Sciences (Physics and Mathematics), coordinator of JINR participation in the physics programme at ATLAS, and author of a number of popular-science articles.           Scientific interests of V.A. Bednyakov are quite wide, embracing elementary particle physics and physics of neutrinos and rare processes, where he carries out successful studies. One of his main research topics is detection of dark mater particles in laboratory experiments. Together with S.G. Kovalenko, he actually laid down a theoretical basis for these researches at JINR. Now he is a leading expert in this field in Russia. Another important line of his research is the search for manifestations of physical phenomena beyond the Standard Model that may allow observing supersymmetry both at extremely high collider energies and in low-energy processes and astrophysics. In 1999, on the basis of the works in those two fields, V.A. Bednyakov defended his doctoral dissertation “Investigation of a possibility of observing supersymmetry in rare processes in cosmology”. His works on detection of galactic dark matter particles on the Earth and in space are widely known not only in Russia but also in the world.