Relativistic heavy ion physics at JINR: status of the BM@N and MPD experiments

The future accelerator facility NICA (JINR, Dubna) will supply ion species ranging from polarized proton to heavy ions with design luminosity of up to 10 cm−2c−1 for Au nuclei in the region of the collider energy up to √ sNN = 11 GeV. It will complement the existing accelerator Nuclotron, which is being currently upgraded in order to be able to accelerate Au nuclei up to Ekin = 4.65A GeV ( √ sNN = 3.5 GeV). These machines will host two heavy ion experiments: BM@N (Baryonic Matter at Nuclotron) and MPD (MultiPurpose Detector), which are described in this paper.