THE IMPLEMENTATION OF CTAO, THE FUTURE GAMMA RAY OBSERVATORY, A WORLD LEADER IN THE COMING DECADES, WILL REPRESENT A EUROPEAN AND NATIONAL SUCCESS
We talked about this with Federico Ferrini, new director of CTAO

In March, Federico Ferrini took over as director of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO), which will be the largest gamma ray telescope in the world. After having spent more than 30 years in astrophysics research and teaching at the University of Pisa, Ferrini was director, from 2011 to 2017, of the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO), the consortium which hosts the Virgo interferometer, right in the crucial years of implementation of the Advanced Virgo project for the upgrade of the detector and the discovery of gravitational waves. Now Ferrini begins a new experience as head of CTAO, a cutting edge scientific and technological enterprise, in which Italy is taking part with the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) and INFN. The significance of the CTAO project, whose headquarters are in Italy, in Bologna, has also been recognised by ESFRI, which has included it in the roadmap that indicates the research infrastructures of primary interest for Europe.

After the recent experience as head of EGO that ended with the success of Virgo, now you are facing a new and significant challenge as director of CTAO. What are the most stimulating and challenging aspects of this project?
CTAO is a project that involves the construction of a research infrastructure that will allow us to study the universe through gamma rays, which are the most intense electromagnetic signals coming from the cosmos, in an absolutely extraordinary range of energy amplitudes. CTAO will be an observatory devoted to run certain key projects, as priority mission, but also dedicated to the requests of scientists worldwide interested in using this unique infrastructure. This is a fundamental novelty with respect to previous gamma research systems. ...

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RESEARCH

NA62 RESEARCH AND THE RARE DECAYS OF THE K-MESON

The NA62 experiment at CERN has recently presented its latest results concerning a very rare event: the decay of the charged K-meson into a pion and two neutrinos. The interest in extremely rare or even "forbidden" decays is motivated by the fact that these processes allow energy scales even much higher than those directly accessible to the most powerful particle colliders, such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, to be indirectly probed. ...

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AWARD

GIANLUIGI FOGLI AND ELIGIO LISI AWARDED THE PONTECORVO PRIZE

The Italian physicists Gianluigi Fogli, former professor of theoretical physics at the University of Bari, and Eligio Lisi, head of research at the INFN Bari Section, have been awarded the prestigious international 2017 Bruno Pontecorvo Prize, awarded annually by the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) of Dubna. The award ceremony will take place in Dubna next September ...

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CULTURAL HERITAGE

SECRETS OF PREVIATI'S WORK ‘PAOLO E FRANCESCA’ REVEALED

A team of researchers from INFN and the University of Ferrara has analysed the "Paolo e Francesca" painting by Gaetano Previati, among the most famous works of the artist, currently exhibited at Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara. The analysis work, presented at the International Exhibition of Restoration, was performed with the technique of digital radiography with a scanner for in situ radiographic diagnostics, built and designed thank ...

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