MEPhI: Nevod Experimental complex

2022: Plant Upgrade

Within the framework of the strategic project "Relativistic Quantum Engineering" at the National Research Nuclear University "MEPhI," work is actively underway to modernize the scientific installation "Experimental Complex NEVOD" to the "megacyence" class. MEPhI announced this on August 9, 2022.

The "NEVOD experimental complex" - an installation on which the so-called "muon riddle" can be solved - is a question of why the amount of elementary particles formed in the upper atmosphere under the action of cosmic rays in the atmosphere observed in the experiment exceeds all theoretical forecasts. Simply put, the mystery is why there are so many muons and where their excess came from.

In 2022, one of the two planes (internal) of the track-coordinate detector TRACK was installed in the complex. A vertically located detector with an area of ​ ​ 250 square meters. m, according to representatives of MEPhI, as of August 2022 has no analogues in the world. To solve the "muon riddle," it is necessary to independently measure the number of muons and their energy release with high accuracy - it is for quantitative fixation that a new track-coordinate detector TRACK is created. Its area is seven times larger, and the spatial resolution is ten times better than that of the DECOR detector available in NRNU MEPhI. In parallel, the university began preparations for the modernization of the Cherenkovsky water calorimeter NEVOD with a volume of 2 thousand cubic meters. m, it is necessary to estimate the energy release of muons.

It is planned that in 2023 the second (external) plane of the TRACK detector will be mounted and the modernization of the Cherenkovsky water calorimeter will begin. Another year later, the adjustment and launch of the two-plane TRACK detector will take place and the modernization of the NEVOD calorimeter will be completed. And in 2025, an experiment will begin to solve the "muon riddle." The created complex "NEVOD - DECOR - TRACK" will become a center of attraction for Russian and, hopefully, foreign scientists to conduct research in the field of ultra-high energies, including within the framework of the consortium "Cosmic Rays and Elementary Particles" created by NRNU MEPhI.