https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/s10050-022-00750-6
Review
Status and initial physics performance studies of the MPD experiment at NICA
1
A. Alikhanyan National Lab of Armenia, Yerevan, Armenia
2
Belgorod National Research University, Belgorod, Russia
3
Central China Normal University, Wuhan, China
4
Departamento de Investigación en Física, Universidad de Sonora, Sonora, Mexico
5
Facultad de Ciencias-CUICBAS, Universidad de Colima, Colima, Mexico
6
Facultad de Ciencias Físico Matemáticas, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Puebla, Mexico
7
Facultad de Ciencias Físico-Matemáticas, Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa, Culiacán, Mexico
8
Fudan University, Shanghai, China
9
High Energy Physics Institute, Tbilisi State University, Tbilisi, Georgia
10
Huzhou University, Huzhou, China
11
Institute for Nuclear Research, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
12
Institute of Applied Physics, Chisinev, Moldova
13
Institute of Experimental Physics, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Košice, Slovakia
14
Institute of Modern Physics of the Chinese Academy of Science, Langzhou, China
15
Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico
16
Jan Kochanowski University, Kielce, Poland
17
Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia
18
Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Moscow, Russia
19
National Center for Nuclear Reseach, Otwock, Poland
20
National Nuclear Research Center, Baku, Azerbaijan
21
National Research Center “Kurchatov Institute”, Moscow, Russia
22
National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute), Moscow, Russia
23
North Ossetian State University, Vladikavkaz, Russia
24
Nuclear Physics Institute CAS, Rez, Czech Republic
25
Palacky University, Olomouc, Czech Republic
26
Pavol Jozef Šafárik University, Košice, Slovakia
27
Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, Gatchina, Russia
28
Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytecnic University, Saint Petersburg, Russia
29
Plovdiv University Paisii Hilendarski, Plovdiv, Bulgaria
30
Saint Petersburg State University, Saint Petersburg, Russia
31
School of Nuclear Science and Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
32
Shandong University, Qingdao, China
33
Skobeltsyn Institute of Nuclear Physics, Moscow, Russia
34
Three Gorges University, Yichang, China
35
Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
36
University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China
37
University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland
38
University of South China, Hengyang, China
39
University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland
40
University of Wroclaw, Wroclaw, Poland
41
Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw, Poland
42
Facultad de Informática, Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa, Culiacán, Mexico
43
Dubna State University, Dubna, Russia
44
Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory of the Armenian Academy of Science, Byurakan, Armenia
45
Yerevan State University, Yerevan, Armenia
46
Millennium Institute for Subatomic Physics at High Energy Frontier-SAPHIR, Santiago, Chile
47
Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel
48
Faculty of Physics, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania
Received:
2
February
2022
Accepted:
14
May
2022
Published online:
27
July
2022
The Nuclotron-based Ion Collider fAcility (NICA) is under construction at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), with commissioning of the facility expected in late 2022. The Multi-Purpose Detector (MPD) has been designed to operate at NICA and its components are currently in production. The detector is expected to be ready for data taking with the first beams from NICA. This document provides an overview of the landscape of the investigation of the QCD phase diagram in the region of maximum baryonic density, where NICA and MPD will be able to provide significant and unique input. It also provides a detailed description of the MPD set-up, including its various subsystems as well as its support and computing infrastructures. Selected performance studies for particular physics measurements at MPD are presented and discussed in the context of existing data and theoretical expectations.
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Società Italiana di Fisica and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2022