GTU Rector Gets Familiar With the Working Process in the Straw Laboratory

The Rector of the Georgian Technical University, Academician David Gurgenidze, was introduced to the working process in the Straw Laboratory, which was opened in the Zhuli Shartava Information Technologies Educational and Research Laboratory Complex of the Faculty of Informatics and Control Systems.

Experimental specimens of 20 mm diameter straw tubes have already been manufactured in the Straw Laboratory, which have successfully passed testing. In the near future, the first batch of straw tubes will be sent to the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) for the SHiP experiment. The main goal of the SHiP experiment is to discover invisible particles beyond the Standard Model.

According to the Rector, the Georgian Technical University, among 48 universities from 20 countries around the world, has been a full member of the SHiP experiment since 2025. The leader of the GTU group of scientists (Team Leader) is Irakli Lomidze. The team is staffed by high-class physicists, engineers, and programmers.

According to Academician David Gurgenidze, the university will be actively involved in implementing the main tasks of the experiment, with the production of 20 mm diameter straw tubes for the experiment being particularly noteworthy.

“The Straw Laboratory at the Georgian Technical University was opened in April last year. It is worth noting that the innovation that was introduced within the walls of our university was implemented for the first time both in Georgia and worldwide. The laboratory successfully produced 5- and 10-mm straw tubes for the COMET experiment (KEK, Japan), which have already been sent to Japan, and through them, data is successfully being collected from the measurements planned within the first phase of the experiment. With the creation of the tracked detector, the awareness and rating of the Georgian Technical University and its scientific circles have significantly increased in the international space. It is noteworthy that our students are also participating in this process along with scientists, and the tubes produced in the Straw Laboratory of the Georgian Technical University have already been sent to Japan, to KEK and J-PARC. A special contribution to the success of the work was made by Nika Tsverava, David Chokheli, and Ilia Chokheli, a master’s student at the GTU. The Georgian Technical University will be actively involved in engineering and data processing and analysis of the SHiP experiment. It is planned to conduct the necessary preparatory work for the experiment, the so-called R&D, during 2026-2032, and from 2030 it is planned to safely turn on the experiment at CERN’s SPS accelerator – 450 GeV energy – and collect and analyze data, which, we hope, will soon be followed by a discovery of fundamental importance in particle physics. I wish success to the Georgian Technical University and the group of Georgian scientists,” says David Gurgenidze.

The pilot production of new-generation straw track tubes was opened last year by the Rector of the Georgian Technical University, Associate Member of the CERN/CMS Experiment, Academician David Gurgenidze, and the Director of the Institute of Quantum Physics and Engineering Technologies of the Georgian Technical University, Head of the CERN-CMS Group of the Georgian Technical University, and Representative of the Georgian Government at CERN, Professor Zviad Tsamalaidze. For the first time in the world, new-generation straw track tubes were manufactured from 12 and 15-micron (µm) aluminized Mylar tape using the most precise and sophisticated ultrasonic welding technology developed by scientists at the Georgian Technical University.

Straw detectors, due to their excellent technical characteristics and availability, are widely used in such major scientific centers as: European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN, Switzerland), experiments: NA-62, SHIP; Japan High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK, Japan), COMET experiment at J-PARC; Fermi Laboratory (FERMILAB, USA), experiments: DUNE, Mu2e.