Maurizio Spurio

NEUTRINO TELESCOPES

Neutrino telescopes are experimental apparatuses taking data under water or in the ice of the South Pole for the

• study of the neutrino properties
• search for very high energy neutrinos from the cosmos with the aim of understanding the processes that originate supernovae, pulsars, AGN, coalescence of neutron stars,...

KM3NeT is a largely European project, which is building two large apparatuses for the detection of neutrinos. The KM3NeT/ARCA telescope is under construction about 100 km off the coast of Portopalo di Capo Passero (Sicily), with the aim of studying TeV neutrinos of astrophysical origin. The KM3NeT/ORCA detector is under construction off the coast of Toulon (France), to study lower energy neutrinos; the main scientific objectives are related to neutrino properties, in particular the determination of their mass hierarchy. The measurements in Italy and France will also house instrumentation for long-term and online monitoring of the deep-sea environment, which will be used for geophysical and marine biology studies.

KM3NeT uses the experience of a smaller detector (ANTARES) which has been taking data both since 2008 (closing operations scheduled for 2022).

Several theses are available, such as the study of neutrinos temporally coinciding with gravitational waves and GRBs, study of neutrinos from the central Galactic region and search for diffuse neutrinos of very high energy, both using the ANTARES data and using the first data collected by KM3NeT. Furthermore, theses of a more technological nature (data acquisition, calibration of submarine equipment) are available, as well as theses related to the marine environment.

For further information, also about bachelor thesis, please contact:

• Prof. Maurizio Spurio, maurizio.spurio@unibo.it
• Prof. Annarita Margiotta annarita.margiotta@unibo.it
• Dr. Giulia Illuminati, giulia.illuminati3@unibo.it
  

SND@LHC EXPERIMENT AT CERN

SND@LHC is a new experiment in the panorama of particle physics, approved in March 2021 by CERN with the aim of collecting data at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) from 2022 to 2025.

SND@LHC will directly observe very high energy neutrinos (TeV) produced in the proton-proton (p-p) collisions of LHC for the first time. All three neutrino flavors (electron, muon, tau) will be studied. Neutrinos are today the only certain anomaly in particle physics. In contrast to what is theorized in the Standard Model, they have a non-zero mass and not determined by the Higgs mechanism. There must be something still unknown to us. But so far the data on neutrino interactions with matter are incomplete. Studies with electron neutrinos are rare. Those with tau neutrinos very rare. The SND@LHC detector is compact (0.6x0.8x2.5 cubic meters), placed in the LHC tunnel at 480 m from ATLAS and intercepts the intense flux of neutrinos emitted at a very small angle in p-p collisions. By interacting with the SND@LHC material (0.8 tons of tungsten), the neutrinos produce particles that cross planes of nuclear emulsions and scintillating fibers, whose signals make it possible to reconstruct and visualize the event. Downstream of the target, planes of plastic scintillators read by silicon photodiodes (SiPM), inserted between iron blocks, identify the neutrino species and measure the energy released in the interaction.

Some possible topics of the Master's thesis are:

• Reconstruction of events for the observation of neutrino interactions produced in p-p collisions. The thesis concerns the development of the measurement and analysis system of nuclear emulsions and the application on the first real events of neutrino interactions.
• Identification of muons for the observation of neutrino interactions
  produced in p-p collisions. The thesis concerns the development of the measurement and analysis system with scintillators for the identification of muons, and the application for the selection of the first real events from neutrino interactions

For further information, also about bachelor thesis, please contact:

• maurizio.Spurio@unibo.it
• andrea.Castro@unibo.it
• marco.Dallavalle@bo.infn.it