Czech Republic approaches higher level of membership in FAIR project

On Wednesday, 17 January 2024, the annual meeting of the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) of the FAIR-CZ project took place in the representative premises of the Vila Lanna in Prague.  This project, coordinated by Andrej Kugler from the Institute of Nuclear Physics, will provide the Czech contribution to the construction of the new European research infrastructure FAIR (Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research GmbH). The Prague meeting was attended by the project's scientific director, Paolo Giubellino, and the director of the Institute of Nuclear Physics, Ondřej Svoboda.

The involvement of the Czech side in the construction of FAIR is based mainly on in-kind deliveries of specific equipment. The successful implementation of these contributions was praised by the SAC members.

"The SAC was particularly positive about the completion of the ECAL detector for HADES and the installation of the detector platform in the newly built CBM hall," says Andrej Kugler. In his words, the committee also appreciated the expansion of the team to include scientists from FNSPE CTU in Prague and Palacký University in Olomouc. "All of these activities together have brought the Czech Republic closer to obtaining the next, higher level of FAIR membership," concludes Andrej Kugler.

At the same time, in view of the significant delay in the construction of the tunnels and the hall for the PANDA pillar, the Board recommended that the testing and development of detectors for this pillar in the Czech Republic be limited to the extent necessary.

The FAIR Antiproton and Heavy Ion Research Laboratory is a newly built European research infrastructure. FAIR, with its mission in the field of nuclear and hadronic physics, is being built in Darmstadt, next to the German national laboratory GSI (Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research), whose facilities will also be used.

FAIR includes research programs in four scientific pillars: compressed baryon matter (CBM and HADES), antiproton annihilation (PANDA), nuclear structure of unstable nuclei, nuclear astrophysics and related reactions (NuSTAR) and atomic and plasma physics and their applications (APPA).