NUMEN: the first post-COVID data kick-off the upgrade

NUMEN, the nuclear physics experiment that could help to reveal the Majorana neutrino mystery, successful ends its Phase 2, after the COVID-19 lockdown period. The Phase 2 of the NUMEN (NUclear Matrix Elements for Neutrinoless double beta decay) project has successfully ended. NUMEN Phase 2 aims, among other objectives, to carry out experimental activity with beams accelerated by the Superconducting Cyclotron (CS) of Laboratori Nazionali del Sud (LNS) and the use of the MAGNEX magnetic spectrometer. This experimental activity was carried out and supported within the H2020 ERC project NURE. Since 2014, several measurements have been performed in which the double charge exchange reactions on different candidate isotopes for neutrinoless double beta decay have been studied. These nuclear reactions are closely related to the double beta decay transitions and it has been shown that crucial information can be obtained from them for the determination of the involved nuclear matrix elements.

The conclusion of Phase 2 of NUMEN coincided with the delivery of the last beam accelerated by the CS accelerator in the present configuration at LNS. The upgrade the LNS CS research infrastructures, proposed by the physical case of NUMEN and foreseen in the POT-LNS project, will provide ion beams at intensities higher more than two orders of magnitude higher than to the current ones.

The NUMEN collaboration is now moving towards Phase 3, in which the intense activity of analysis and interpretation of the numerous data collected will be accompanied by the construction of new and more performing detectors, capable of sustaining the high rate expected after the upgrade works.

NUMEN ends a phase and is ready to start a new one!

MAGNEX magnetic spectrometer at Laboratori Nazionali del Sud