• A.D. Kovalenko, N.N. Agapov, V.D. Kekelidze, H.G. Khodzhibagiyan, I.N. Meshkov, V.A. Mikhaylov, V.A. Petrov, A.N. Sissakian, A. Sorin, G.V. Trubnikov
  JINR, Dubna, Moscow Region

NICA (Nu­clotron-based Ion Col­lid­er fA­cil­i­ty) is the new ac­cel­er­a­tor com­plex cur­rent­ly under con­struc­tion at JINR. The fa­cil­i­ty is aimed to pro­vide col­lid­er ex­per­i­ments with heavy ions up to ura­ni­um (gold at the be­gin­ning stage) with a cen­tre of mass en­er­gy up to 11 GeV/u and an av­er­age lu­mi­nos­i­ty up to 10²⁷ cm^-2 s^-1. The col­li­sions of po­lar­ized deuterons and pro­tons are fore­seen also. The ac­cel­er­a­tor com­plex in­cludes two in­jec­tor linacs, a su­per­con­duct­ing boost­er syn­chrotron, a 6 GeV/u su­per­con­duct­ing syn­chrotron (ex­ist­ing Nu­clotron) and a col­lid­er con­sist­ing of two stor­age rings. Dif­fer­ent mod­i­fi­ca­tions of su­per­fer­ric mag­nets based on a hol­low com­pos­ite NbTi cable op­er­at­ing at 4.5 K is pro­posed to be used for the NICA boost­er and col­lid­er rings. The twin-aper­ture col­lid­er dipole con­sists of two ver­ti­cal­ly as­sem­bled cold mass­es placed in­side a com­mon ther­mal shield and a com­mon cryo­stat. The dipole good field aper­ture is fixed to 60 mm. The 2 T op­tion, which de­sign is very sim­i­lar to the Nu­clotron's one, was fixed as basis for the col­lid­er of 350 m long. R&D work on a curved 4 T Co­sine(θ)-dipoles based on a hol­low Nu­clotron-type cable is pro­posed to be con­tin­ued.

• A.O. Sidorin, N.N. Agapov, A.V. Eliseev, V. Karpinsky, H.G. Khodzhibagiyan, A.D. Kovalenko, G.L. Kuznetsov, I.N. Meshkov, V.A. Mikhaylov, V. Monchinsky, A.V. Smirnov, G.V. Trubnikov, B. Vasilishin
  JINR, Dubna, Moscow Region
• A.V. Butenko
  JINR/LHE, Moscow

The main goal of the Nu­clotron boost­er con­struc­tion are fol­low­ing: ac­cu­mu­la­tion up to 4·10⁺⁹ Au³²⁺ ions; ac­cel­er­a­tion of the ions up to en­er­gy of 600 MeV/u that is suf­fi­cient for strip­ping of the ions to the bare nu­cle­us state; sim­pli­fi­ca­tion of the re­quire­ments to the vac­u­um con­di­tions in the Nu­clotron; form­ing of the re­quired beam emit­tance at the en­er­gy of 100 MeV/u with elec­tron cool­ing sys­tem. The fea­tures of this boost­er, the re­quire­ment to the main syn­chrotron sys­tems and their pa­ram­e­ters are pre­sent­ed.

• A.O. Sidorin, O.S. Kozlov, I.N. Meshkov, V.A. Mikhaylov, G.V. Trubnikov
  JINR, Dubna, Moscow Region
• V.A. Lebedev, S. Nagaitsev
  Fermilab, Batavia
• Y. Senichev
  FZJ, Jülich

Main el­e­ment of the NICA fa­cil­i­ty is the col­lid­er equipped with stochas­tic and elec­tron cool­ing sys­tems to pro­vide ex­per­i­ment with heavy ions like Au, Pb or U at en­er­gy from 1 to 4.5 GeV/u with av­er­age lu­mi­nos­i­ty of the level of 10²⁷ cm^-2 s^-1. The pos­si­ble lat­tices pro­vid­ing the re­quired pa­ram­e­ters are dis­cussed.

• A.O. Sidorin, N.N. Agapov, V. Batin, A.V. Butenko, D.E. Donets, A.V. Eliseev, A. Govorov, V. Karpinsky, V.D. Kekelidze, H.G. Khodzhibagiyan, A. Kirichenko, O.S. Kozlov, I.N. Meshkov, V.A. Mikhaylov, V. Monchinsky, S. Romanov, V. Shevtsov, A.N. Sissakian, I. Slepnev, V. Slepnev, G.V. Trubnikov, B. Vasilishin, V. Volkov
  JINR, Dubna, Moscow Region
• V. Alexandrov
  BINP SB RAS, Protvino, Moscow Region
• O.I. Brovko, A.D. Kovalenko
  JINR/LHE, Moscow

The 'Nu­clotron-M' pro­ject start­ed in 2007 is con­sid­ered as the key point of the first stage of the NICA/MPD pro­ject. Gen­er­al goal of the 'Nu­clotron-M' pro­ject is to pre­pare all the sys­tems of the Nu­clotron for its long and re­li­able op­er­a­tion as a part of the NICA col­lid­er in­jec­tion chain. Ad­di­tion­al­ly the pro­ject re­al­iza­tion will in­crease the Nu­clotron abil­i­ty for re­al­iza­tion of its cur­rent ex­per­i­men­tal pro­gram. Re­sults of the last runs of the Nu­clotron op­er­a­tion are pre­sent­ed.