Unveiling the Mystery of Antinuclei in the Universe

Monday 28 Apr 2025, 13:55 → 17:00 Europe/Rome

Aula Conversi (Dip. di Fisica - Edificio G. Marconi)

Luque Pedro de la Torre (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)

Pomeriggio tematico sulla possibile detection di antinuclei dall'esperimento AMS.

1 Preliminary anti-nuclei observations challenge standard scenarios

Detection of anti-nuclei in the Galaxy has been long pursued as an "unambiguous proof of exotic physics", which can reveal the presence of beyond standard model processes or even provide indication of antiparticle systems (e.g. anti-stars). Recently, the AMS-02 collaboration reported the tentative detection of a few events of antihelium and antideuteron, which defy all current predictions on the expected fluxes of these elements from known astrophysical processes. In this talk, I'll show state-of-art predictions of the anti-nuclei signals expected from both astrophysical and standard dark matter annihilation models obtained from combined fits to high-precision antiproton data as well as cosmic-ray nuclei measurements. Since these predictions lay far below the reported observations by AMS-02, I'll discuss possible scenarios that have been proposed to explain them.

Speaker: Pedro De la Torre Luque (Institute of theoretical physics (IFT))

2 Heritage and challenges for next generation charged cosmic-ray space missions

The current generation of Charged Cosmic Ray (CCR) experiments in operation in space (e.g. AMS-02, DAMPE, CALET) is providing novel information and is measuring unexpected features that are challenging the phenomenological community to revisit the paradigms behind the established theories of cosmic-ray origin, acceleration and propagation, and to formulate comprehensive models able to consistently explain all the observed structures. This achievement has been made possible thanks to the observation of features in cosmic-ray spectra unveiled by the high granularity (in energy and in time), high resolution and high statistics measurement of all the CCR components, in a wide range of energies (O(GeV) - O(100 TeV)). Leveraging on the experience and on the heritage of the current detector generation, several new ideas to further improve, and possibly lead to a breakthrough, the field are being studied, developed, and being applied. The first two experiments benefiting of these novel ideas are the AMS-02 experiment with its "Layer0 Upgrade" (2026) and the HERD experiment to be installed on the Chinese Space Station (2026 - 2027). The same concepts, in addition to other technological steps forward, are also being applied to the design of a new generation of revolutionary CCR experiments (e.g. ALADInO and AMS-100). The lessons learned from the operations of the current generation of CCR detectors and the perspectives for future CCR space missions will be reviewed and discussed.

Speaker: Matteo Duranti (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare)

16:30 Coffee Break