The process of neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ) plays a crucial role in nuclear and particle physics. While several feasible candidate isotopes are available and a multitude of experimental efforts are ongoing all over the world, the decay has eluded detection. The half life measured in 0νββ experiments is converted into effective neutrino mass, where one of the main sources of...
A novel functional form for fitting neutrino luminosities from
core-collapse supernovae was recently proposed by Lucente et al. (2024),
capturing the effects of convection inside the proto-neutron star (PNS)
through a power-law temporal decay. While this model accurately
describes the cooling phase, it does not account for the neutrino flux
during, approximately, the first second, which...
Although the standard three-flavor neutrino framework has been firmly established, several experimental anomalies remain that cannot be explained within this model. One possible explanation involves extending the paradigm by introducing a light sterile neutrino - an SU(2) singlet that does not interact via the weak force. While this extension is theoretically well motivated, experimental...
The First G-APD Cherenkov Telescope (FACT) is located at an altitude of 2200 meters a.s.l. on the island of La Palma. It was built to monitor bright blazars in the TeV energy range. In addition, FACT carries out follow-up observations of multi-wavelength and multi-messenger alerts. Its camera, which is based on silicon-based photosensors, allows observations during strong moonlight. The...
Elusive particles like low-energy neutrinos and dark matter candidates require extremely sensitive detectors to be revealed. In experiments probing nuclear recoils, induced by sub-GeV dark matter particles or CE$\nu$NS, a low energy threshold and minimal backgrounds are mandatory. For these purposes, an advanced offline analysis of triggered pulses from the detector stream can make a...
A precise measurement of neutron flux is crucial for underground experi-
ments, as neutrons may cause significant background for rare events searches. Due to the high neutron capture cross-section of the gadolinium isotopes present in cerium-doped Gd$_3$Al$_2$Ga$_3$O$_{12}$ (GAGG) crystal, combined with the high attenuation coefficient for efficient detection of neutron-induced γ rays, the...
Double beta decay is a rare nuclear process that provides valuable insight into neutrino properties and possible physics beyond the Standard Model. Accurate nuclear matrix element (NME) calculations are essential for interpreting related experiments. In this work, we describe the Second Tamm-Dancoff Approximation (STDA) and the Equation of Motion Phonon Method (EMPM), focusing on their...
Over the last few decades, major developments in cryogenic detectors have enabled detection thresholds in the energy range of a few tens of eV and resolutions in the energy range of a few eV, opening up unprecedented prospects in the search for rare events, such as the direct detection of dark matter and coherent elastic neutrino scattering on nuclei. The signal expected from these experiments...
The Taishan Antineutrino Observatory (JUNO-TAO or TAO) is a satellite experiment of the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO). The experiment is located at 44 m from Unit 1 and 217 m from Unit 2 of Taishan Nuclear Power Plant (NPP). TAO primary objective is to measure the reactor electron antineutrino (𝜈̅ₑ) spectrum with sub-percent energy resolution, providing a model-independent...
The study of neutrino interactions with matter has provided significant insights into the properties of neutrinos and the dynamics of weak interactions. One particularly intriguing puzzle is the so-called "Gallium Anomaly", observed in the GALLEX, SAGE, and more recently the BEST experiments, which measure the neutrino capture process on gallium,
νₑ + ⁷¹Ga → e⁻ + ⁷¹Ge, historically used for...
BULLKID is a cryogenic, solid-state detector designed for direct searches of particle Dark Matter candidates, with mass ≤ 1 GeV/$c^2$, and coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering. It is based on an array of dice carved in 5 mm thick crystals, sensed by phonon mediated Kinetic Inductance Detectors. In previous works, the array was calibrated with bursts of optical photons, which are absorbed in...
The determination of the absolute neutrino mass scale remains a fundamental open question in particle physics, with profound implications for both the Standard Model and cosmology. The only model-independent method for measuring the neutrino mass relies on the kinematic analysis of beta decay or electron capture (EC) decay, assuming only momentum and energy conservation. Embedding the...
The high momentum transfer encountered in heavy ion Double Charge Exchange (DCE) reactions provides an ideal environment for studying correlation phenomena beyond mean-field in Nuclear Matrix Elements (NMEs). This investigation is of paramount interest for probing the nuclear counterpart of the elusive neutrinoless double beta (0νββ) decay. Currently, the NMEs for such a decay are embedded in...
Fundamental neutrino physics experiments at GeV scale struggle with large uncertainties in neutrino interaction cross sections, especially when statistical uncertainty for next generation experiments will no longer be the dominant uncertainty. The nuSCOPE collaboration (previously known with the working name of SBN@CERN), born from merger of ENUBET and NuTag collaborations, is trying to tackle...
The Muon $g-2$ collaboration at Fermilab has announced their final result of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. This result is now in agreement with the latest theoretical prediction to the $1\sigma$ level. This new result further constrains the allowed parameter space, but does not rule out all possible new physics contributions the muon $g-2$. We study the implications for one of...
Next-generation experiments for neutrinoless double beta decay search (0νββ) employing the bolometric technique plan to exploit the characteristic scintillation yields of particles to achieve particle discrimination, thus reducing their background.
In a bolometer, when a particle interacts within the main absorber, energy is deposited as phonons (i.e. crystal excitations). By measuring...
The MONUMENT experiment investigates ordinary muon capture on isotopes relevant for 0$\nu\beta\beta$ decay. Data were collected using two parallel acquisition systems, with this contribution focusing on ALPACA—an in-house developed system with fully offline analysis. The analysis chain comprises energy and time reconstruction, detector calibration, quality cuts, efficiency determination, and...
The electron capture decay of 123-Te to 123-Sb is a second-order unique forbidden decay with a Q-value of 51.9 keV. It provides an excellent means to explore the limits of current theoretical models of electron capture at high daughter nucleus angular momentum and low Q-value. The Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE) is a cryogenic calorimeter experiment located at Gran...
We present the Taylor expansion formalism for describing the two-neutrino double-beta ($2\nu\beta\beta$) decay. In predicting the $2\nu\beta\beta$ decay spectra, we include the radiative and atomic exchange correction. We also investigate the impact of the electron phase shift on the angular correlation between the emitted electrons. Additionally, we examine the contribution of all s-wave...
The coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEνNS) is a neutral-current weak interaction in which a low-energy neutrino (tens of MeV) scatters off a nucleus, producing a small nuclear recoil that is extremely challenging to detect. Due to the low energies involved, this process was experimentally observed only in 2017 by the COHERENT experiment. Its significance lies in the fact that its...
Experiments searching for light dark matter or coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering need to adopt detectors achieving very low energy thresholds, such as cryogenic phonon detectors. The phonon-mediated detection of silicon particle absorbers has been already proved with Kinetic Inductance Detectors, acting as phonon collectors and sensors at the same time.
We developed a first...
The NUMEN (NUclear Matrix Elements for Neutrinoless double beta decay) project, as well as the NURE (NUclear REactions for neutrinoless double beta decay) project, have recently been proposed at the INFN-LNS laboratory to study Heavy-Ion-induced Double Charge Exchange (HI-DCE) reactions to provide data-driven information on the neutrinoless double beta (0νββ)-decay nuclear matrix elements....
Over the last decade, searches for sub-GeV particle Dark Matter (DM) candidates have rapidly advanced. Light Dark Matter particles detection represents a challenge because it requires sensitivity to faint nuclear recoils and thus very low energy threshold ($\mathcal{O}(0.1)$ keV). At the same time, accessing lower cross-section ranges demands high-mass targets. The BULLKID-DM experiment aims...
Low-energy neutrino processes on nuclei are a fundamental tool for studying weak interactions and nuclear structure. The dominant process at these energies is Coherent and Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering (CE$\nu$NS), which was measured on argon in 2020 by the COHERENT collaboration. As well as this, inelastic neutrino interactions on nuclei can also occur, mediated by charged or neutral...
Inverse beta decay (IBD) is a crucial process historically employed to study neutrinos.
For example, discrepancies between measured and expected IBD rates on (^{71}\text{Ga}), the so-called , suggest the possible existence of sterile neutrinos. A recent publication showed that the poorly known associated Nuclear Matrix Element (NME) can be extracted measuring the decay width from the Isobaric...
KM3NeT (Kilometre Cube Neutrino Telescope) is the largest underwater observatory worldwide. It is composed of two detectors deployed in two sites of the Mediterranean Sea (ARCA in the Ionian Sea and ORCA in the Ligurian Sea), and it is designed to detect high-energy (> 100 GeV) neutrinos through the Cherenkov radiation. The reconstruction of the neutrino direction relies on the detection of...
The ICARUS T600 LAr-TPC detector has started its new physics runs in June 2022 at Fermilab within the SBN program. This detector is recording neutrino interactions from the Booster BNB neutrino beam in order to definitively clarify the open questions related to the possible existence of sterile neutrinos, as suggested by numerous observed experimental anomalies. In addition the neutrinos...
