Archivi categoria: Nuclear Physics

International Cosmic Day 2021

Torna anche quest’anno l’International Cosmic Day (ICD), la giornata dedicata ai raggi cosmici. ICD è un’iniziativa di respiro internazionale sulle misure di raggi cosmici rivolta alle scuole secondarie superiori. L’appuntamento con ICD sarà Mercoledì 10 novembre 2021. In tutta Italia, più di 4500 studentesse e studenti delle scuole secondarie di II grado parteciperanno a eventi in presenza e online coordinati dai dipartimenti di Fisica, dai laboratori e dalle sezioni INFN aderenti all’iniziativa. Quest’anno, in occasione dell’iniziativa, coordinata a livello internazionale dal centro di ricerca tedesco DESY, la rete Outreach Cosmic Ray Activity (OCRA) propone un grande evento online trasmesso dalla Sezione di Lecce, in diretta dalle 9.30 alle 13 sul canale YouTube INFN Edu Physics. Il Dipartimento di Fisica e Geologia di Perugia parteciperà assieme alla sezione INFN, con gli studenti del Liceo Scientifico E. Majorana di Orvieto (TR).

Le scuole partecipanti all’International Cosmic Day 2021

New publication on Neon, Magnesium, and Silicon in Cosmic Rays

Our new results obtained with the AMS experiment onboard the Space Station are published: The paper presents new measurements of the energy spectra for Ne, Mg, and Si in cosmic rays. These spectra reveal features not predicted by existing cosmic-ray models. Improving these models should lead to a better understanding of the supernovae that produce and accelerate cosmic rays and of the interstellar medium, through which they travel. Cosmic-ray nuclei carry information on supernovae, on the processes that forged the elements, and on the structure of our Galaxy and of the interstellar medium—information that researchers hope to extract by analyzing spectra for each cosmic-ray element. All known chemical elements are present in cosmic rays, but their prevalence generally decreases with increasing atomic number, reflecting the scarcity of heavier elements in the cosmos. So far, precise spectra have been obtained for the elements from hydrogen to oxygen; measurements of heavier-element spectra have error bars as large as 20%. With such poor data to work with, researchers haven’t previously learned much from these elements’ spectra. These new results now give theorists a lot of work to do, and they are “opening an entirely new window” on precision cosmic-ray spectroscopy.

XSCRC-2019 Workshop: Cross sections for Cosmic Rays @ CERN

Cosmic-ray (CR) physics in the GeV-TeV range has entered a precision era with recent data from space-based experiments. However, the poor knowledge of nuclear reactions (production of antimatter and secondary nuclei) limits the information that can be extracted from these data (source properties, transport in the Galaxy, indirect searches for dark matter).

The first edition of this workshop was held in 2017 (XSCRC17, see indico pages here). Its goal, bringing together different communities (CR theorists, CR experimentalists, nuclear and particle physicists), was to review theoretical motivations for CR studies, new CR data, and how the modelling of CRs crucially depends on nuclear reactions. The workshop was also strongly aimed at presenting current efforts and discussing forthcoming perspectives for particle/nuclear measurement campaigns.

This second edition will review the advances made in the last two years, and highlight some results obtained thanks to collaborations started during the first edition. We also hope that this edition will further strengthen these emergent synergies, taking advantage of the complementarity and know-how in different communities: the challenges that pose the interpretation of high-precision CR data can only be undertaken with a collective and coordinated effort. Here is the Indico page of the workhop.

In the figure: a few slides from my presentation at the XSCRC workshop.

Workhop: Light Anti-Nuclei as a Probe for New Physics (LAN2019)

In recent years, increased efforts were spent towards the detection of antimatter in space, such as positrons and antiprotons in Galactic cosmic rays. This workshop focuses on the next milestone in cosmic-ray physics, that is the detection of antideuteron or antihelium nuclei by the present or next generation of space instruments: a challenging but promising avenue in the search for new physics. The goal of this workshop is to bring together scientists from different fields, from astroparticle to nuclear physics, to discuss about the experimental challenges and the theoretical implications of the detection of antinuclei in Galactic cosmic radiation.