prof. dr hab. David Blaschke

The NICA Project at JINR Dubna

I report about the goal, status and perspective of the Nuclotron-based Ion Collider fAcility (NICA) at the JINR Dubna. Goal: creation of compressed baryonic matter in heavy-ion collisions and the study of observational signatures of the expected QCD deconfinement transition which most strikingly would proceed as a first order transition with the formation of a mixture of quark and hadron matter phases. Status: flagship project on the roadmap of JINR Dubna, approved as a "megascience" project by the Russian Duma, under construction. Perspective: start of fixed target experiments (BM@N) in 2017, of collider experiments (MPD) shortly after that.