The emergence of detector technologies with sensitivity to lower energies and improved resolution invites a shift of emphasis in particle-decay searches for massive neutral bosons: the kinematic limit of these reactions remains an unexplored realm where cosmologically-relevant particles may be waiting to be discovered. A case that illustrate this is the charged lepton flavour violating […]
Progress in particle physics has traditionally been achieved by a symbiosis of experiments at the energy and intensity frontiers and model-building. This has led to the current situation of the Standard Model (SM) representing our best knowledge of particle physics, but which leaves a number of open questions to be resolved. These include the composition […]
Deep below the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, we find the LSC (Laboratorio Subterráneo de Canfranc – Canfranc Underground Laboratory), where the NEXT experiment is taking place. Its goal is one of the remaining holy grails of particle physics: the proof that the neutrino is its own antiparticle, a result with profound meaning not only […]
spallation Progress in particle physics has traditionally been achieved by a symbiosis of experiments at the energy and intensity frontiers and model-building. This has led to the current situation of the Standard Model (SM) representing our best knowledge of particle physics, but which leaves a number of open questions to be resolved. These include the […]
Chemistry • DIPC Biochemistry • DIPC Interfaces • DIPC Particle Physics • Particle physics
The observation of the neutrinoless double beta decay is the only practical way to establish that neutrinos are their own antiparticles. But, because of the small masses of neutrinos, the lifetime of neutrinoless double beta decay is expected to be at least ten orders of magnitude greater than the typical lifetimes of natural radioactive chains […]
Radioactive isotope 136Xe can undergo a special kind of decay known as double beta decay. In that event, two electrons and two neutrinos are emitted from the xenon atom. If the neutrino is its own antiparticle, a so-called Majorana particle, two neutrinos in the same region of space have a chance of annihilate themselves, and […]
Concluding that the neutrino is a Majorana particle would be really a turning point in our understanding of the universe. It would mean the non-conservation of a magnitude called the leptonic number, one of the key characteristics in a fermion, meaning that there would be an explanation to the matter-anti matter asymmetry: the creation of […]
Deep below the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, we find the LSC (Laboratorio Subterráneo de Canfranc – Canfranc Underground Laboratory), where the NEXT experiment is taking place. Its goal is one of the remaining holy grails of particle physics: the proof that the neutrino is its own antiparticle, a result with profound meaning not only […]
Chemistry • DIPC Biochemistry • DIPC Interfaces • DIPC Particle Physics • Materials • Particle physics
A new fluorescent bicolour indicator, an organic molecule, could help detect the daughter atom of a neutrinoless double beta decay. If this is achieved, there would be an explanation to the matter-anti matter asymmetry in the universe. Experiments performed in 1909 by Geiger and Marsden, also called Rutherford gold foil experiment because Rutherford was their […]
Spallation is a type of nuclear reaction in which the interacting nuclei disintegrate into a large number of protons, neutrons and other light particles, rather than exchanging nucleons between them. It is thought that most of the nuclei of light elements, such as boron, are made in this way. Spallation reactions of this type are […]