The NICA-SPD project: a new tool to investigate the hadron structure

Abstract

SPD is an international Collaboration gathering around the Spin Physics Detector at the Nuclotron-based Ion Collider FAcility (NICA), presently under construction at the Joint Institute per Nuclear Research, in Dubna. The project is briefly presented with special focus to the opportunities opened by the collision of high luminosity polarized proton and deuteron beams with total energy up to $\sqrt{s}$=27 GeV. Examples of the foreseen research program are highlighted, in connection with the spin structure of light nuclei, the proton gluon content and the spin dependence of the nucleon-nucleon interaction. The unicity of NICA-SPD makes the future results complementary to the studies that have been or will be performed at other polarized hadron machines in different energy domains.