PEOPLE

MARCH 2016

EUROPE BETS ON THE KM3NET SUBMARINE NEUTRINO TELESCOPE
Interview with Giacomo Cuttone, director of the INFN National Laboratories of the South


The KM3NeT project in which INFN plays an important role with its National Laboratories of the South, has been selected as part of the 2016 ESFRI (European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures) Roadmap. KM3NeT is a project for the construction of a submarine neutrino detector in the Mediterranean Sea, which will have as its scientific objectives the study of astrophysical sources of cosmic neutrinos, determination of the mass of the neutrino and creation of new opportunities for synergistic research in marine and environmental studies. The project envisages a research infrastructure distributed among three deep-sea sites: off Portopalo di Capo Passero in Sicily (Italy), Toulon (France) and Pylos (Greece). The preparatory phase of the experiment ended in December 2015 when the Capo Passero site concluded sea laying and land connection operations of the first KM3NeT string.

 

Inclusion of the KM3NeT project in the ESFRI Roadmap was announced on 10 March during the launch event of the roadmap 2016. A result based on a history of frontier research started many years ago. Could you tell us about the most salient points?

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NEWS

MARCH 2016

SPACE

EXOMARS, EUROPEAN MISSION TO MARS GETS UNDERWAY

The ExoMars (Exobiology on Mars) robotic mission, implemented by the European Space Agency (ESA) in cooperation with the Russian agency Roscosmos, has left from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, in the steppes of Kazakhstan, bound for the Red Planet to search under the surface for any signs of Martian life, past or present. ...

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RESEARCH

A NEW PHASE FOR PROTON BEAMS
AT THE LHC

LHC has started up again. On 25 March 2016, after the usual winter technical break, which began on 14 December last, at 11:33 the first two proton beams completed their first lap inside the 27 km ring of the CERN super-accelerator in ...

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COOPERATION

SCIENTIFIC COOPERATION AGREEMENTS BETWEEN INFN AND IRANIAN RESEARCH INSTITUTES SIGNED

During a series of meetings, which were held in March in Iran, INFN signed five cooperation agreements with the same number of scientific research institutes in the country.

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RESEARCH

THE FIRST BEAMS ARE CIRCULATING IN THE SUPERKEKB ACCELERATOR

The first particle beams were injected and stably circulated for the first time in the SuperKEKB accelerator at the KEK laboratory in Tsukuba, Japan. SuperKEKB is the first accelerator for research in fundamental physics to come into operation after the LHC at CERN in Geneva, and has been designed to work at a luminosity never achieved before, as much as forty times greater than that of the most powerful previous generation accelerator. ...

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APPLICATIONS

HERITAGE SCIENCE: E-RHIS NET INCLUDED IN THE EUROPEAN STRATEGY FOR RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURES

Knowledge and preservation of the cultural and natural heritage today have a new ally: E-RIHS, the only European research infrastructure on Heritage Science to be officially included in the ESFRI ...

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FOCUS ON


A EUROPEAN ERC GRANT FOR THE NEW ENUBET NEUTRINO SOURCE

Andrea Longhin, a researcher at the Frascati National Laboratories (LNF) INFN has been awarded one of the 302 2015 Consolidator Grants of the ERC (European Research Council) addressed, on a competitive basis, to high-impact research programmes. The grant, amounting to 2 million euros, will support the Enhanced NeUtrino BEams from kaon Tagging (ENUBET) neutrino physics project for a period of five years, which will officially start on 1 June. The objective of the ENUBET project, which promises to open a new frontier in neutrino physics, is to provide physicists with an innovative technology for the production of intense sources of electron neutrinos (νe), with an accuracy ten times greater than standard: a novel investigation instrument in the field of neutrino physics. Traditional beams, conceived back in the 60s of the last century, are characterised by severe limitations, which have heavily influenced the precision study of the oscillation phenomenon. The phenomenon is characterised by gradual transitions between the three neutrino families, which take place during propagation and which are due to the fact that neutrinos have a mass, even if small. Being able to measure, in particular, small differences in the oscillation from a muon neutrino into an electron neutrino (νμ → νe) and that involving their antiparticles - a phenomenon known as leptonic CP violation - would have important consequences. The predominance of matter over antimatter, which is observed in all that surrounds us, could in fact be a consequence of the behaviour of primordial neutrinos present shortly after the Big Bang. ...

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CONTACT



INFN - COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE

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INFORMATION


cover image:

The DOM, the Digital Optical Module of the KM3NeT neutrino telescope

 

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