THE LHC RESTART AND NEW PROSPECTS

Interview with Roberto Tenchini, president of the INFN National Scientific Committee 1, which coordinates the institute’s activities in the particle physics sector, and researcher with the INFN Pisa Division

Last 22 April, the whole international particle physics community welcomed with interest and enthusiasm the news coming from CERN where two proton beams, each with an energy of 450 billion electronvolts (450 GeV), were injected in opposite directions inside the 27-kilometre underground ring of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the biggest and most powerful particle accelerator ever created. The restart of the LHC, which comes after a stop of almost three years, during which the machine and the four big experiments installed at the beam collision points underwent maintenance and upgrade works, was, in fact, the first step towards fully restarting scientific activities of the third data acquisition period (Run 3). ...

On 22 April, LHC was restarted with the injection of the first two proton beams. What does this initial switching-on stage of the LHC entail and how long will it last?

The LHC is a complex machine, a particle collider with a 27 km ring with a large number of components. Just to give an example: only the magnetic dipoles, which “bend” the beams, are 1232. The LHC itself receives the beams from the CERN accelerator complex. After a period of three years in which improvements were made and repairs carried out, we need to verify that each of its parts operates perfectly, increasing, step by step, the intensity of the packets of protons, the number of packets themselves, and their energy.

STANDWITHUKRAINE

THE CALL FOR UKRAINIAN RESEARCHERS AND TECHNOLOGISTS IS NOW OPEN

A first INFN call for applications (available on the Job Opportunities page on the website www.infn.it/en/) for research grants to support Ukrainian scientists is open. This call offers to researchers and technologists the possibility to work at one of the INFN facilities. "The objective of the positions offered by our Institute - explains Antonio Zoccoli, president of INFN - is to give concrete help to Ukrainian colleagues whose personal and professional lives have been devastated by this atrocious war. If this call is successful, the number of positions offered could be increased in the future."

read more | italian version

INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATIONS

THE CONCLUDING STAGE OF THE PIP-II PROJECT APPROVED

The final phase of the Proton Improvement Plan-II (PIP-II), the upgrade of the Fermilab accelerator complex, kicks off. Fermilab is the main US centre for particle physics, in Batavia, Illinois. The Department of Energy (DOE) of the United States has, in fact, formally approved the start of works envisaged by the PIP-II, including a new superconducting linear accelerator of 215 metres (LINAC) that will produce the high-energy neutrino beam for DUNE (the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment), in which INFN is also taking part.

read more | italian version

RESEARCH

MAGIC TELESCOPES OBSERVE A RARE GAMMA EVENT IN THE SKY

A new study conducted by the European collaboration MAGIC, published on 14 April in the journal Nature Astronomy, revealed the observation of a flow of high-energy gamma rays coming from a recurrent nova in the Milky Way. The event, the first of its kind to be detected at similar energies, sheds light on a class of astrophysical phenomena considered responsible for the periodic explosions that take place on the surface of novae - stellar bodies belonging to the family of white dwarves - and for the emission of a part of the photons that constitute the gamma radiation background that permeates our whole galaxy.

read more | italian version

RESEARCH QUALITY EVALUATION

2015-2019 RESEARCH QUALITY EVALUATION: INFN CONSOLIDATES ITS LEADING POSITION AMONG PUBLIC RESEARCH BODIES FOR QUALITY OF RESEARCH AND THIRD MISSION

INFN consolidates its top position among Public Research Bodies overseen by the Ministry of Universities and Research (MUR) in the 2015-2019 research quality evaluation (VQR) of the Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes (ANVUR), and also in the evaluation of the quality of its Third Mission, or its knowledge and technology transfer and dissemination of scientific culture.

read more | italian version

TECHNOLOGIES

THE FIRST ITALIAN WORKSHOP ON THE GREAT ACCELERATOR OF THE FUTURE

The First FCC-Italy Workshop was recently held in Rome. This was the first Italian workshop dedicated to the project for the successor of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the Future Circular Collider. The event, organized by INFN, was attended by 120 researchers, and 15 reports were presented.

read more | italian version

TRAINING

FROM PARTICLES TO THE STARS: HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS AT THE MODERN PHYSICS SCHOOL

From particle physics to the Universe, from the infinitely small to the infinitely large: almost 200 senior high school students from Italy and other countries in the world participated to INSPYRE (International School on modern PhYsics and REsearch), the international school organised by the INFN Frascati National Laboratories, from 4 to 8 April.

read more | italian version