RIKEN and Brookhaven National Laboratory extend MoU collaboration

On June 22, at an event celebrating 25 years of partnership between RIKEN and Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), President Gonokami signed an agreement with BNL’s Director-elect JoAnne Hewett to extend the RIKEN-BNL Memorandum of Understanding until 2028. The MOU was extended to further promote collaboration on spin physics research.

The RIKEN BNL Research Center (RBRC), which was established in 1997, encompasses theory, computational and experimental groups. The theory group conducts research on hot and cold QCD matter based on RHIC experiments. The members of the computational physics group carry out precise calculations that are essential to understanding various aspects of QCD from first principles, using lattice QCD. On the experimental side, scientists explore the spin structure of the nucleon and the physics of the quark gluon plasma.

The RBRC has achieved numerous research results in the spin physics program at RHIC. For example, the confirmation of the formation of the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) and the measurement of QGP temperatures exceeding 2 trillion degrees Celsius are the most notable results. A recent achievement was the conclusive evidence that the spin of the gluon in the proton is aligned in the same direction as that of the proton. In the future, the recently completed sPHENIX detector, a new detector at RHIC with exceptional capabilities for particle jet measurements, will be used to complete the scientific research mission of the RHIC: heavy-ion and polarized-proton collisions.

At the commemorative event, RIKEN and BNL celebrated the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the RBRC, and with it the opportunity to review the center’s research achievements and contributions to the field over the past quarter century and to consider its future. The event also looked back at successful examples of cooperation in science and technology between the U.S. and Japan.

The signing of the agreement (left, Director-elect JoAnne Hewett; right, President Gonokami)

Group photo