PHYSICS APPLICATIONS

INFN has always been committed to promoting and improving technologies developed for fundamental physics and their applications to society. In fact, fundamental research needs advanced technologies that require the invention of unprecedented solutions, since they’re often not yet part of our wealth of expertise and of businesses’ industrial capacity. This fact constitutes a unique impulse for developing innovative technologies in various fields. There are many examples, from medical diagnostics to oncological therapies, from art history to archaeology, from geology to atmospheric science. One of the most important consists of the development, in Italy, of technologies for treating tumours using protons and carbon ions (hadrontherapy).
INFN has accumulated more than ten years’ direct experience in this field at its National Laboratories of the South, in Catania, and has built the hadrontherapy machine of the CNAO, the National Centre for Oncological Hadrontherapy in Pavia.
Moreover, INFN is engaged in analysing and studying the environment and cultural heritage with its tools. It is developing innovative, non-destructive analysis techniques in its laboratories, like the Laboratory of nuclear techniques for Environment and Cultural Heritage (LABEC), which INFN manages in collaboration with the University of Florence. These techniques are useful for determining the composition of materials in art works, for the purposes of preservation and restoration, or for monitoring atmospheric particulate matter, to provide data that helps both develop effective policies to reduce pollution and understand climate change.