0000000000135503
AUTHOR
Salvatore Tudisco
The NUMEN project @ LNS: Status and perspectives
The NUMEN project aims at accessing experimentally driven information on Nuclear Matrix Elements (NME) involved in the half-life of the neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ), by high-accuracy measurements of Heavy Ion (HI) induced Double Charge Exchange (DCE) reaction cross sections. In particular, the (18O,18Ne) and (20Ne,20O) reactions are used as tools for β+β+ and β−β− decays, respectively. In the experiments, performed at INFN - Laboratory Nazionali del Sud (LNS) in Catania, the beams are accelerated by the Superconducting Cyclotron (CS) and the reaction ejectiles are detected the MAGNEX magnetic spectrometer. The measured cross sections are challengingly low (a few nb), being the tota…
Recent results on heavy-ion induced reactions of interest for neutrinoless double beta decay at INFN-LNS
Abstract The NUMEN project aims at accessing experimentally driven information on Nuclear Matrix Elements (NME) involved in the half-life of the neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ). In this view measurements of Heavy Ion (HI) induced Double Charge Exchange (DCE) reaction cross sections are performed with high-accuracy. In particular, the (18O,18Ne) and (20Ne,20O) reactions are used as tools for β+β+ and β-β- decays, respectively. In the experiments, performed at INFN - Laboratory Nazionali del Sud (LNS) in Catania, the beams are accelerated by the Superconducting Cyclotron (CS) and the reaction ejectiles are detected the MAGNEX magnetic spectrometer. The measured cross sections are challe…
The NUMEN project @ LNS : Status and perspectives
The aim of the NUMEN project is to access the Nuclear Matrix Elements (NME), involved in the half life of the neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ), by measuring the cross sections of Heavy Ions (HI) induced Double Charge Exchange (DCE) reactions with high accuracy. First evidence of the possibility to get quantitative information about NME from experiments is shown in the reaction 40Ca(18O,18Ne)40Ar at 270 MeV, performed with MAGNEX spectrometer using Superconducting Cyclotron (CS) beams at INFN - Laboratory Nazionali del Sud (LNS) in Catania. Preliminary tests on 116Sn and 116Cd target are already performed. High beam intensity is the new frontiers for these studies. peerReviewed
First measurement of the 18O(p,α)15N cross section at astrophysical energies
International audience; The 18O(p,α)15N reaction rate has been deduced by means of the Trojan horse method. For the first time the contribution of the 20 keV resonance has been directly evaluated, giving a value about 35% larger than the one in the literature. Moreover, the present approach has allowed to improve the accuracy by a factor 8.5, as it is based on the measured strength instead of spectroscopic measurements. The contribution of the 90 keV resonance has been also determined, which turned out to be of negligible importance to astrophysics.
Measuring nuclear reaction cross sections to extract information on neutrinoless double beta decay
Neutrinoless double beta decay (0v\b{eta}\b{eta}) is considered the best potential resource to access the absolute neutrino mass scale. Moreover, if observed, it will signal that neutrinos are their own anti-particles (Majorana particles). Presently, this physics case is one of the most important research "beyond Standard Model" and might guide the way towards a Grand Unified Theory of fundamental interactions. Since the 0v\b{eta}\b{eta} decay process involves nuclei, its analysis necessarily implies nuclear structure issues. In the NURE project, supported by a Starting Grant of the European Research Council (ERC), nuclear reactions of double charge-exchange (DCE) are used as a tool to extr…