
Particle and high energy physics
To verify the predictions of the theory that defines our current knowledge of subnuclear physics, the "Standard Model", and extend the understanding of the nature of the infinitely small and the description of the Universe in its very first moments of life, particle physics studies the fundamental constituents and interactions of matter and radiation. The expression High Energy Physics (HEP) refers to experiments that study particles created in very high energy accelerators and not present in nature under ordinary conditions.
The Standard Model of fundamental interactions has experienced important and numerous successes over the last decades in predicting with great precision many experimental results in a coherent theoretical-phenomenological framework; however, it is not able to answer some important questions that emerge from recent experimental observations, such as the origin of the neutrino mass, the origin of the matter-antimatter asymmetry, the origin and nature of the "dark matter" necessary for account for the dynamics observed in the motion of galaxies. The research groups make use of the close collaboration of the INFN and other Italian and foreign institutions.
Staff
Full Professors: Roberto Carlin, Ugo Gasparini, Donatella Lucchesi, Franco Simonetto, Marco Zanetti
Associate Professors: Riccardo Brugnera, Alberto Garfagnini, Alessandro Gaz, Marco Grassi, Martino Margoni, Jacopo Pazzini, Paolo Ronchese, Roberto Rossin, Gabriele Simi, Roberto Stroili, Andrea Triossi, Pierluigi Zotto
Assistant Professors: Marco Laveder, Mia Tosi, Andrea Serafini
Post-doc
Davide Zuliani
PhD students
Cecilia Antonioli, Rocco Ardino, Lorenzo Borella, Federica Borgato, Gabriele Bortolato, Laura Buonincontri, Vanessa Cerrone, Sofia Calgaro, Arsenii Gavrikov, Luca Giambastiani, Sabrina Giorgetti, Nicolò Lai, Matteo Migliorini, Giovanna Saleh, Shu-Ping Lin
External collaborators
Paolo Andreetto, Patrizia Azzi, Nicola Bacchetta, Marco Bellato, Alessandro Bertolin, A. Bettini, Pierluigi Bortignon, Massimo Benettoni, Tommaso Dorigo, Federica Fanzago, Alessio Gianelle, Jakub Kandra, Stefano Lacaprara, Ivano Lippi, Enrico Lusiani, Luigi Pertoldi, Mariia Redchuk, Ezio Torassa, Sandro Ventura, Alberto Zucchetta
Research activities
Standard model physics (precision measurements and rare processes)
Higgs bosons measurements with the CMS experiment
The discovery of the Higgs boson, announced by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations in 2012, represents a milestone in understanding the electroweak sector of the Standard Model (SM) of elementary particles, and confirms its full validity. The presence of the Higgs boson led to the beginning of a new series of measurements, aimed at determining with the greatest possible precision the couplings of the Higgs boson with the other SM particles. The measurement of the coupling constant of the Higgs boson to fermions, and in particular to "second generation" ones such as muons and c-quarks, is probably the challenge with the greatest impact among the possible measurements in the Higgs sector: in fact, a discrepancy between the experimental measurement of a process involving such coupling and the prediction of the Standard Model would imply the presence of "New Physics".
Contacts : Ugo Gasparini, Mia Tosi
Website: CMS
Search for signals of physics beyond the standard model
The more traditional search for signals of new physics makes use of theoretical models that predict the peculiar characteristics of the physical processes involved. However, these models do not exhaust the totality of experimental evidence that can allow new processes to manifest themselves. The large amount of possible signatures requires automatic tools to quickly analyze a large amount of data. Algorithms based on machine learning techniques allow us to highlight anomalies that are potentially produced by new physical processes.
Contacts : Marco Zanetti
Website:CMS
Physics with heavy quarks
CP violation measurements with the Belle2, LHCb and CMS experiments
The study of the production of hadrons with b and c quarks, their decay and their temporal evolution allows us to acquire a profound knowledge of electroweak interactions and quantum chromodynamics. In fact, one or more discrepancies between experimental measurements and the predictions of the Standard Model could be attributed to "New Physics" phenomena currently out of reach of direct research that exploits collisions between very high energy protons.
The study of the violation of the discrete charge conjugation symmetry, CP, is one of the requirements to explain the baryon asymmetry observed in the current Universe. In the Standard Model this asymmetry is predicted and parameterized by experimentally measurable parameters through the study of decays of hadrons with heavy quarks.
Belle2
Contacts : Alessandro Gaz, Roberto Stroili
Website: BelleII
LHCb
Contacts : Federica Borgato
Website: LHCb
CMS
Contacts : Martino Margoni, Franco Simonetto
Website:CMS
Lepton universality test with the LHCb experiment
Lepton universality predicts that the three leptons (electrons, muons and taus) have completely identical interactions, except for effects due to the difference in mass. The study of baryon decays with b quarks in leptons allows us to test the Standard Model precisely, and possibly highlight the presence of “New Physics”.
Contacts : Gabriele Simi
Website: LHCb
Mass and nature of neutrinos
Neutrinos mass measurement with the LEGEND experiment
The LEGEND experiment (Large Enriched Germanium Experiment for Neutrinoless ββ Decay) searches for decay without neutrino emission using the 76 isotope of germanium. In its first phase, called LEGEND-200, the experiment uses 200 kg of 76-Ge and is located in the INFN Gran Sasso National Laboratories (IT). Assuming that the sought process occurs through the exchange of massive Majorana neutrinos, the experiment is sensitive up to effective masses around 0.027-0.064 meV. The LEGEND-200 experimental setup also allows us to develop and test the experimental techniques necessary for a future experiment (LEGEND-1000) that attempts to probe neutrino mass values in the inverse hierarchy region (O(10) meV).
Contacts : Riccardo Brugnera, Alberto Garfagnini
Website: LEGEND
Neutrinos mass measurement with the JUNO experiment
The JUNO experiment, located in an underground laboratory in southern China, is the largest liquid scintillator detector ever built for neutrino physics. JUNO will measure with unprecedented precision the energy of neutrinos produced by nearby nuclear power plants, each at a distance of 53 km from the experiment. It will shed light on the structure of the masses of the three known neutrinos, determining what is called the "mass hierarchy" of neutrinos.
Contacts : Alberto Garfagnini, Marco Grassi
Website: JUNO
Study of neutrino oscillations
Neutrino “flavor” oscillations consist of a change between the three known types of neutrino (electronic, muonic and tauonic) that occurs when neutrinos are detected after traveling distances of the order of hundreds or thousands of km, typically passing through underground. Discovered in 1998, they are the first evidence that neutrinos are particles with mass (albeit incredibly small compared to other particles). At DFA this phenomenon is studied by the JUNO, T2K-Hyper-Kamiokande and ICARUS-DUNE and ENUBET experiments.
Neutrinos oscillations studies with the JUNO experiment
The JUNO experiment is a large, cutting-edge liquid scintillator detector for neutrino physics. JUNO will measure with unprecedented precision the energy of neutrinos produced by nearby nuclear power plants, each at a distance of 53 km from the experiment. Thanks to the active mass of 20,000 tons of liquid scintillator, it will be able to determine the mass hierarchy of neutrinos, one of the still unsolved problems in the field of neutrino physics.
Contacts: Alberto Garfagnini, Marco Grassi
Website: JUNO
Neutrinos oscillations studies with the T2K experiment
T2K studies how neutrinos change type (“flavor”) as they travel 295 km from the Pacific coast to the Japanese Alps. There, under the mountains, there is Super-Kamiokande: a huge cylindrical tank of ~ 40x40x40 m3, filled with water and equipped with very sensitive light detectors to measure the characteristics of neutrinos. In the heart of the Japanese Alps, an increased version of the detector (Hyper-Kamiokande) is being built which will allow us to answer the question of whether neutrinos respect an important symmetry of the laws of nature (the so-called CP symmetry). It will also be able to measure neutrinos from supernovae, the Sun and the atmosphere and to establish to what extent we can be certain that the matter we are made of (protons in particular) are stable particles or not.
Contacts: Gianmaria Collazuol
Website: T2K, Hyper-Kamiokande
Neutrinos oscillations studies with the DUNE experiment
DUNE is a huge detector under construction in the US (the largest ever built with liquid argon). It will be used to understand whether neutrinos and their antiparticles behave the same as each other or not. This could reveal the mechanism by which matter is present to a much greater extent than antimatter in the current universe. DUNE will also precisely determine the structure of neutrino masses. ICARUS is the first large-scale demonstration of the capabilities of neutrino detectors, made with liquid argon, first proposed in 1977 by Carlo Rubbia. After having operated at Gran Sasso, it is now operating at Fermilab (Chicago, US) to search for a new type of neutrino, even more elusive than those we already know
Contacts: Daniele Gibin
Website:DUNE, ICARUS
Optimization of the neutrino beams with the ENUBET project
ENUBET is a project that aims to create an innovative neutrino source characterized by excellent intensity control. It is funded by the prestigious European Research Council (ERC). ENUBET's innovative idea is to transform the very "hot" region in which neutrinos are produced into a large particle detector to "count" the emitted neutrinos.
Contacts: Andrea Longhin
WebsiteENUBET
Trigger and data acquisition
The amount of data produced by the experiments that reveal collisions at the LHC accelerator is more than hundreds of thousands of billions of bytes. Not being able to save and analyze all this amount of information, sophisticated and fast reconstruction, calibration, selection and data management algorithms are developed on CPU, GPU and FPGA.
LHCb
Contacts: Alessandro Bertolin
Website: LHCb
CMS
Contacts: Andrea Triossi, Mia Tosi
Website: CMS