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Russian Scientists Are Developing an Ion Collider To Probe Matter-Antimatter Interactions, Beyond Standard Physics

January 2017


The Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics in Akademgorodok (Academic City), Russia, 30 km south of Novosibirsk.

Jan. 4, 2017 (EIRNS)—In today’s edition, Russian news service Sputnik continues its series of articles on ground-breaking science in Siberia, following yesterday’s article on the magnetic mirror fusion experiment at the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics. Today, the article describes work on a matter-antimatter ion collider to be based at the Dubna Institute outside Moscow, which would combine efforts with Budker to build what would be a science mega-project. Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics deputy director, Yevgeny Levichev, told RIA Novosti that the Super Tau Charm Factory, as it is called, would be a particle accelerator which would study the collision of beams of electrons and positrons to "identify phenomena and processes beyond the Standard Model of particle physics." Pavel Logachev, Budker Institute Nuclear Physics director, explained, "At present, and for the forseeable future, there is no other facility anywhere in the world with the capacity to conduct the kinds of research that the Super Tau Charm Factory would be capable of."

The scientists explain that this would be the first of six government-approved science mega-projects, but that so far, the government has not allocated funding for the project, expected to cost about $446 million. But the physicists are continuing to work on it, using a grant from the Russian Scientific Foundation.

The other science mega-projects include an experimental nuclear reactor complex at the Kurchatov Institute; a special-purpose synchrotron radiation source, also at Kurchatov; a center for extreme light studies, in Nizhniy Novgorod; and the IGNITOR fusion project, at Kurchatov.