Tag Archives: Evento scientifico

Rinaldo Baldini Ferroli è stato uno dei protagonisti della storia scientifica di questi Laboratori. Animato da una rara “curiosità bibliografica”, ha raccolto preziosi volumi che la famiglia ha desiderato donare ai colleghi come sua personale eredità. In occasione dell’intitolazione a suo nome della Biblioteca dei Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati, desideriamo ripercorrere le tappe principali della sua ricca attività scientifica e condividere un momento di comune ricordo.  

The future Circular Collider electron-positron stage (FCC-ee) is the proposed next flagship project at CERN for the post-LHC era. Several detector concepts are proposed at FCC-ee, they all demand unprecedented precision in detector subsystems to exploit its ultra-high luminosity across key center-of-mass energies, from the Z pole to the tt threshold. Among these subsystems, the muon detector plays a dual role: providing high-efficiency muon identification and precise momentum measurement in tandem with the central tracker, while also serving as a tail catcher for hadronic showers. This talk presents an overview of candidate detector concepts and technology choices currently under investigation for the FCC-ee muon systems. We discuss the unique experimental constraints of the FCC-ee environment, the required detector performance, and the requirement for long-term stability, operability and maintainability of the system. Various gaseous detector technologies, such as Drift Tubes, Micro-Pattern Gaseous Detectors, Resistive Plate Chambers, and Scintillators with Silicon Photo Multiplier readout, are evaluated in terms of spatial resolution, timing performance, rate capability, background tolerance and operational reliability. Finally, we highlight ongoing simulation studies for physics benchmarks, and the primary R&D milestones required to mature these detector concepts for future technical design reports.

Speaker: Luca Marzola (Keemilise ja bioloogilise füüsika instituut) I’ll showcase how observables from quantum information theory can be investigated at collider experiments and how quantum information techniques can be repurposed for new physics searches.

Speaker: Mario Fernandez Navarro (University of Zurich) The QCD axion provides a compelling solution to the strong CP problem. In this talk I will discuss a minimal origin for the otherwise unspecified Peccei-Quinn symmetry of the QCD axion based on an extra-dimensional gauge theory, which nevertheless retains much of the simplicity of traditional KSVZ/DFSZ anomaly sectors. I will then consider more general scenarios involving additional PQ-breaking sources compatible with the strong CP solution, and/or multiple axion states originating from extra PQ symmetries. I will show that the photon-coupling phenomenology is qualitatively controlled by two structural properties: whether a linear combination of PQ symmetries broken only by QCD exists, and whether the anomaly coefficients are universal. This leads to a general sum rule governing the (multi-)axion system, helping to connect a potential experimental signature with the underlying axion potential and its UV completion.

Speaker: Gianluca Cavoto (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare) The PTOLEMY project aims at taking a snapshot of the first second of the Universe, when the Cosmic Neutrino Background (CνB) decoupled, which has been for a long time a dream in the field of Cosmology. The PTOLEMY detection principle relies on CνB capture on a target of beta-unstable elements, since in this process mono-energetic electrons are emitted just above the beta-decay endpoint. The extremely low cross section imposes a large target mass resulting in a prohibitive rate of background events. For this reason a novel concept dynamic electromagnetic-filter, capable of selecting electrons in the region of interest has been developed. The usage of beta-unstable element, as target, imposes an extreme energy resolution to disentangle electrons from beta-decays from those emitted in the case of neutrino capture. This makes a possible detector of relic neutrinos a perfect instrument to measure neutrino mass. The neutrino mass measurement has the advantage that can be achieved with much less target mass while the technology for relic neutrino detection is being validated. The status of the on-going R&D efforts towards a full demonstrator being assembled at INFN LNGS is discussed.

Speaker: Anna Kulesza (Muenster Univ.) It has been 30+ years since the discovery of the top quark, the heaviest elementary particles known to date, yet its studies continue to be one of the most important scientific activities within the LHC programme. The physics of the top quark plays a crucial role for our understanding of the Standard Model, searches for possible new physics and, as of late, provides a new way to study quantum-mechanical phenomena such as entanglement. In this talk, I will focus on a particularly rare class of processes at the LHC, the associated top quark pair-production. While reviewing the current status, I will specifically focus on improvements in precision of theoretical predictions achieved by application of QCD resummation techniques.

Speaker: Alessandro Manzardo (Padova Univ.) Il seminario introduce i principi di base della Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) — Analisi del Ciclo di Vita — con l’obiettivo di chiarire cos’è questo strumento, perché può essere utile e in che modo può supportare lo sviluppo del progetto EuPRAXIA. L’incontro sarà dedicato a spiegare come funziona uno studio LCA, che cosa misura, quali output produce e in che modo i risultati possono contribuire a una migliore comprensione degli impatti ambientali associati alla realizzazione e al funzionamento dell’infrastruttura. Una parte specifica sarà dedicata ai dati necessari per avviare lo studio: quali informazioni verranno richieste al team di progetto, perché sono importanti e come saranno utilizzate nell’analisi. Il seminario sarà inoltre un momento di confronto con il team EuPRAXIA, utile per allineare obiettivi, aspettative e disponibilità dei dati.

Speaker: Daniele Lombardo (Sapienza Roma Univ.) Up to now, bounds on the axion-up-charm axial coupling, kA, come only from the baryonic decay Lambda_c -> p a and from D-anti D mixing, which are both affected by large theoretical uncertainties. I will show a novel procedure to infer new constraints on this coupling from D0-meson decays with an axion in the final state. In particular, I will discuss how to compute the differential decay width of the BSM process D0 -> pi pi a and to find a new constraint on  kA via a sensitivity study. In particular, I will focus on the treatment of the form factors appearing in the hadronic matrix element associated with this transition, which can be directly extracted from measurements concerning semi-leptonic four-body D+-meson decays. All these inputs also produce a Dalitz plot, giving important information for future dedicated experimental searches. In conclusion, I will discuss how further constraints on kA$ may be obtained from other complementary decay channels, as for instance the D0 -> K+ K- a$ transition, and from information coming from astrophysics, such as e.g. the cooling of supernovae.

Speaker: Roberto Mattacchione (Roma Sapienza Univ.) The fermion mass hierarchy remains one of the most glaring puzzles of the Standard Model (SM). A prominent framework to address this is the Froggatt-Nielsen (FN) mechanism, where hierarchical Yukawa couplings originate from a spontaneously broken flavor symmetry. In this setup, effective higher-dimensional operators generate fermion masses after heavy vector-like fermions are integrated out. This work systematically evaluates the phenomenological viability of various FN charge textures. We demonstrate that the top and bottom quark masses impose the most stringent constraints, and we introduce a novel analytical method to estimate the FN parameters directly from specific charge assignments. To quantify the naturalness of these scenarios, we define measures of fine-tuning for both individual observables and entire models. Our analysis reveals that reproducing SM phenomenology without extreme fine-tuning requires non-trivial FN configurations. Finally, we establish a robust set of diagnostic tests to evaluate a texture’s viability and apply them to several models from the literature. We find that while minimal textures are generally insufficient, non-minimal textures featuring larger charge separations successfully reproduce SM data. The implications for gauge coupling running and potential ultraviolet (UV) completions are also discussed.

Speaker: Stefano Morisi (Università Federico II Napoli) I propose two alternatives to the axion mechanism for addressing the strong CP problem. The first approach involves imposing CP as an inherent symmetry of the Lagrangian, which is then spontaneously broken. To generate the correct texture for the Yukawa matrices, is assumed a discrete Z2 symmetry that is softly broken by the scalar potential. By identifying a benchmark point for the Yukawa couplings that aligns with the measured quark masses, the CKM matrix, and low-energy flavor-changing constraints, our findings suggest that this model offers a viable solution to the CP problem I also mention a second approach based on SO(10) GUT model.