A team of physicists at Tomsk State University is developing a software to describe the geometry of the SPD detector – one of the key elements of future experiments at the NICA collider (Dubna). It is impossible to simulate physical processes and build a real installation without this “virtual construction”. Research is carried out with the support of the mega-grant of the government of the Russian Federation.
The NICA collider is a major international project in the field of high-energy physics, implemented in Russia on the basis of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research and aimed at studying the properties of dense baryon matter. Currently, scientists at different research centers are creating equipment for future experiments.
– In modern high-energy physics, the path to discovery begins not with the launch of an accelerator, but with computer modeling, – says Ramdas Makhmanazarov, a researcher at the Laboratory for Analysis of High-Energy Physics Data at the TSU Faculty of Physics. – Before colliding real particles, scientists must “run” thousands of simulations in digital space. However, this requires a perfect digital twin of the detector itself – the most complex device.
Thus, the researchers create a detailed three-dimensional digital “drawing” of the object, describing not only the shape of each tube and plate, but also the material fr om which they are made. This is critical, because particles behave differently, flying through lead, plastic or liquid argon.
Detector modeling is, in fact, a virtual scientific experiment. A special program “shoots” virtual particles into the created model and calculates how they will decay, deviate and give rise to new particles, interacting with the substance of the detector. The elements of the SPD detector are objects of incredible complexity, wh ere any error in the description of the geometry may distort the results of the experiment. Therefore, the geometry here is made using a program code.
The task of the TSU team is to develop and maintain a special software environment for describing the geometry of the SPD detector, in which this global project is being implemented.
– Together with colleagues from SPD, a modular software platform SPDGeoModel was created. This is an environment in which the geometry of the SPD detector can be described in a consistent, unified manner and in accordance with modern programming standards, explains Ramdas Makhmanazarov. – The detector is in the process of design, its configuration is constantly changing, so the work is performed in close collaboration with scientists and SPD designers responsible for individual parts of the detector.
The coordinated work of TSU scientists with colleagues from the collaboration makes it possible to find the optimal shape of the future detector, which in a real experiment will record the trajectories of particles after collision and give scientists an understanding of what exactly happened in the first moments of the existence of the Universe.
For reference: SPD (Spin Physics Detector) – a specialized detector on the NICA collider (Dubna) – is designed to study the spin structure of the proton and deuteron. The participation of TSU in the development of software for describing the geometry and modeling of the detector is an important contribution to the world-class project.