Nuclear matter physics at NICA

The exploration of the QCD phase diagram is one of the most exciting and challenging projects of modern nuclear physics. In particular, the investigation of nuclear matter at high baryon densities offers the opportunity to find characteristic structures such as a first-order phase transition with a region of phase coexistence and a critical endpoint. The experimental discovery of these prominent landmarks of the QCD phase diagram would be a major breakthrough in our understanding of the properties of nuclear matter. Equally important is the quantitative experimental information on the properties of hadrons in dense matter which may shed light on chiral symmetry restoration and the origin of hadron masses. Worldwide, substantial efforts at the major heavy-ion accelerators are devoted to the clarification of these fundamental questions, and new dedicated experiments are planned at future facilities like CBM at FAIR in Darmstadt and MPD at NICA/JINR in Dubna. In this article the perspectives for MPD at NICA will be discussed.