A magnet from CERN for dark photon research in Frascati

The INFN recently approved an experiment concerning the search for a new fundamental interaction connecting our world to the dark matter. The latter is one of the main components of our Universe, still, we know nothing about its nature.

The PADME experiment is an apparatus dedicated to the search for the mediator of the new “dark force”(or “dark photon”): it would be similar to the photon of the ordinary electromagnetic radiation, but with very little mass and very little interactions with ordinary matter.
In the next three years the experiment will be designed and built at the National Laboratory of Frascati, to be positioned in a new experimental room of the LINAC accelerator. The experimental apparatus will be built up around a crystal calorimeter and will need a uniform magnetic field with an aperture as wide as possible. Thanks to the collaboration with CERN in Geneva, a spare magnet of the Super-Proto Synchrotron (SPS), has been adapted and sent to the National Laboratory of Frascati, at the Beam-Test Facility, right before the Christmas holidays.