The
Meson
Physics
Laboratory (
MPL) was officially formed in 1964.
That time it was named a division "Meson and Mesoatoms", the existing title of the Laboratory has been aproved in 1986.
From 1964 till the end of 2002 the Laboratory was headed by Sergei Pavlovich Kruglov, who was an initiator of the
MPL creation
and a permanent leader of the Laboratory.
The Meson Physics Laboratory was created at the time when there were hot discussions of
a scientific program of experiments at the PNPI synchrocyclotron which was under construction in 60s. And the study of
pN interactions at the pion channel of the
PNPI synchrocyclotron was chosen that time
as a primary scientific direction of the
MPL.
After 1969, scientists and engineers of the Laboratory took active part in the construction and tuning the pion
channel and in the inverstigation of characteristics of this channel.
The pion channel allows to get intense beams of
p+
and
p- mesons with energies up to 650 MeV. At present, pions beams of comparable intensity
in the above energy range exist only at
Brookhaven
National
Laboratory (
USA) and at
KEK (
Japan). First physics measurements at the pion channel started at the end of 1970.
At the first stage, a series of experiments were carried out in the framework of a general program "Baryon spectroscopy in the region of low-lying
pN resonances with pion beams". The experiments included measurements of the differential cross sections, the polarization parameters
P, A, R
and covered the energy range from 300 to 640 MeV. In total, about 500 new experimental points were obtained during these experiments. These new results were used as a main part of the database when
performing a new phase shift analysis PNPI-94.
