Image: Nino Bruno, Laboratory: Gran Sasso National Laboratory | 18 April 2013Italy takes top honours among strong competition in the 2012 Global Particle Physics Photowalk. In September 2012, hundreds of amateur and professional photographers had the rare opportunity to explore and photograph accelerators and detectors at particle physics laboratories around the world. The photograph of Nino Bruno, a building contractor in L'Aquila, picturing a tunnel connecting the underground halls of INFN's Gran Sasso National Laboratory garnered the most online votes and a panel of international judges awarded the top prize to Joseph Paul Boccio's detailed photograph of the KLOE detector at INFN's Frascati National Laboratory. Read the press release View top thirty-nine photographs from the Photowalk
Category: Image of the week | Tagged: INFN, InterAction Collaboration, photos, photowalk
Barry Barish | 13 January 2011Happy New Year! This is my first column of 2011 and I am very pleased to begin the year by reporting on the significant new investment in particle physics by the Italian government. The Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research has announced the funding of the proposed €400-million Super B project of the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN). The present plan is to site the machine at or near the Frascati Laboratory and to reuse magnets and other apparatuses from the PEP-II accelerator and the BABAR detector at SLAC in the US, both keeping costs down and enabling a rapid construction schedule, perhaps as short as five years.
Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: B factory, B physics, electron-positron collider, INFN, Italy, Super B
Perrine Royole-Degieux | 22 April 2010What do the ILC and environmental protection have in common? The answer is: superconducting cavities. The European MYRRHA is an experimental facility aimed to demonstrate the technical feasibility of nuclear waste transmutation in an accelerator-driven system. The main part of the accelerator will consist in a series of superconducting cavities. At INFN Milano, Italy, a group has transferred all its experience from the TESLA Technology Collaboration and ILC for the development of elliptical proton cavities for this application. Last month, a prototype cryomodule containing one low-beta elliptical cavity was installed in dedicated test stand at the IPNO/Supratech technological platform in Orsay, France.
Category: Feature | Tagged: INFN, Italy, Milano, MYRRHA, TESLA
Barry Barish | 16 April 2009Last week a major earthquake struck Italy about 10 kilometres from the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (Gran Sasso National Laboratory). The inhabitants of the city of L'Aquila nearby the laboratory suffered numerous injuries and loss of lives, as well as extensive damage to buildings, homes and historic structures. (...) The Gran Sasso Laboratory, the most ambitious deep underground research facility in the world, suffered no significant damage, and for that we can be thankful.
Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: Gran Sasso National Laboratory, INFN, Italy, LNGS
Barbara Warmbein | 12 March 2009Susanna Guiducci has her head in the clouds – electron clouds, that is. (Sometimes she sits in clouds that gather around the Frascati hills south of Rome where she is based at the INFN Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati or LNF, but that is not really relevant to this story – just very picturesque.) As new leader of the damping ring group, one of the key R&D projects in the ILC’s Technical Design Phase, she also has her feet firmly planted in electron-positron accelerator physics and has been working on damping rings for ten years. All that experience gives her a clear picture of where the challenges lie in the ILC damping ring design, but she is confident: “I am convinced that the parameters set for the damping rings are feasible.”
Category: Profile | Tagged: damping ring, electron cloud, Frascati, INFN, Italy, LNF, profile
Barry Barish | 26 July 2007One of our most important and challenging goals for the ILC will be to develop government agreements that will underlie a true international governance for the ILC.
Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: FALC, INFN, Italy, Rome
Barry Barish | 1 June 2006Last week I attended the meeting of the Funding Agencies for the Linear Collider -- FALC -- at the INFN Headquarters in a historic building nestled in the small twisty streets near the Pantheon and Piazza Navona in the heart of beautiful old Rome.
Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: FALC, INFN, Italy, Rome
Barry Barish | 8 December 2005This week the GDE is in Frascati, Italy. We have come together for what is only our second face-to-face meeting, following our kick-off meeting as part of the Snowmass workshop just over three months ago.
Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: BCD, Frascati, INFN, Italy, LNF
