On Thursday, February 12th, the kick-off meeting of NEMESIS (Neutron Experiments join Muon Experiments for Synergy in Investigation and Search for new physics) was held, a project approved by the European Commission under the MSCA Staff Exchange program.
This is a consortium made up of research institutions and industrial partners led by the National Laboratories of Frascati (LNF) of INFN, bringing together researchers from the European Union, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and the United States to conduct frontier research in the field of particle physics beyond the Standard Model, combining the potential offered by muons and ultra-cold neutrons and developing a new generation of detectors and high-intensity particle beams.
The project plans to support research programs conducted at three prestigious international laboratories: Fermilab (FNAL) and Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in the United States, and the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) in Switzerland. NEMESIS researchers participate in the Mu2e (FNAL) and MEG-II, Mu3e (PSI) experiments, which aim to observe for the first time charged lepton flavor violation (cLFV) processes, exploiting the most intense muon sources available worldwide. NEMESIS will also play a key role in measurements of the Electric Dipole Moment (EDM) of muons and neutrons, fundamental to understanding the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the Universe. NEMESIS includes the development of innovative technologies for improving the manipulation, monitoring, and quality of high-intensity beams of muons and ultra-cold neutrons.
"These technologies, in addition to enabling the proposed measurements, represent an important step forward in the study of muon beam cooling, one of the major challenges of recent years," states Donatella Lucchesi, coordinator of a work package and head for the Department of Physics and Astronomy. "The development of innovative detectors will be the other key element for the success of the measurements proposed by NEMESIS, and these detectors will also be used in EPIC (BNL), an experiment expected to collect data after 2034 for the study of the internal structure of protons in order to understand the generation of mass and spin of a composite particle," states Rosario Turrisi, head for INFN-Padova.
