HSE Researchers Join BESIII Collaboration to Study Charmed Hadrons
HSE University has joined the international BESIII (Beijing Spectrometer III) collaboration in high-energy physics. This marks the first practical outcome of the memorandum of cooperation signed in 2025 between HSE University and the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) in Beijing, China.
As part of the collaboration, a group of researchers from the International Laboratory of Elementary Particle Physics at HSE MIEM will study the quantum-correlated production of charmed hadrons and investigate the properties of highly excited strange and charmed particles.
BESIII is an international high-energy physics experiment. Its detector is installed at the BEPCII electron–positron collider at IHEP. The experiment is designed for precision studies of processes in the tau–charm energy region, from 2 to 5 GeV, which contains a large number of particles (resonances) composed of light quarks. This energy range also includes the production thresholds for tau leptons and heavy charmed hadrons. The BESIII collaboration currently brings together more than 700 scientists from 86 research institutes in 16 countries.
Tagir Aushev
Membership in the collaboration gives HSE researchers full access to unique BESIII experimental data and the opportunity to conduct independent physics analyses, according to Tagir Aushev, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Head of the International Laboratory of Elementary Particle Physics at HSE MIEM. ‘This allows researchers to test their own scientific ideas using real experimental data, including searching for new and rare processes, studying the properties of elementary particles, and testing theoretical predictions,’ Tagir Aushev noted. ‘Participation in the collaboration also involves contributing to the experiment as a whole: scientists take service shifts at the detector and participate in the development and maintenance of its software and computing infrastructure.’ HSE researchers have thus become full members of an international scientific team, gaining access to centralised computing resources and participating in discussions on the experiment’s scientific programme and key areas of development.
Students play an important role in the collaboration. They participate in all stages of the experiment, from detector shifts and equipment calibration to software development and independent analysis of experimental data. The internal peer-review process in the collaboration helps students prepare papers for publication in leading scientific journals under their own names.
‘Participation in the project allows early-career researchers to master advanced methods for analysing large datasets, machine learning, and distributed computing, while learning directly from leading experts in particle physics around the world,’ says Alexey Drutskoy, Leading Research Fellow at MIEM HSE International Laboratory of Elementary Particle Physics.
See also:
HSE and Joint Institute for Nuclear Research Sign Cooperation Agreement
The HSE Faculty of Physics and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) have reached an agreement on a joint partnership. From the beginning of the next academic year, students from the faculty will be able to carry out internships at the institute’s various research laboratories.