Recent results and research programme of the Laboratory of High Energies, JINR

The research programme of the Laboratory of High Energies, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, is concentrated on investigations of interactions of relativistic nuclei in the energy region from a few hundred MeV to a few GeV per nucleon to search for manifestations of quark and gluon degrees of freedom in nuclei, asymptotic laws for nuclear matter at high energy collisions as well as on the study of the spin structure of the lightest nuclei. Experiments along these lines are being carried out with the beams of the Synchrophasotron-Nuclotron accelerator complex, as well as of other accelerators at CERN (SPS, LHC), BNL (RHIC), GSI (SIS), and at CELSIUS storage ring in Uppsala, Sweden. During several years the LHC research programme has been carried out mostly on the Nuclotron, while the Synchrophasotron is used practically only for research with polarized deuteron beams. In the nearest future we have a plan to obtain polarized beams at the Nuclotron, too. (author)