Gran Sasso’s chamber of physics
THE A, B AND C OF GRAN SASSO
Experiments at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory are housed in and around three huge halls carved carved deep inside the mountain, where they are shielded from cosmic rays by 1,400 metres of rock.
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CUORE
CRESST
DAMA
GERDA
LVD
OPERA
ICARUS
DarkSide
XENON100
Borexino
ENRICO SACCHETTI
CUORE
Cryogenic underground observatory for rare events
Looks for neutrino-less double beta decay.
- Scheduled to come online in 2014, this experiment will look for a rare form of radioactive decay in 204 kilograms of tellurium-130.
ENRICO SACCHETTI
CRESST
Cryogenic rare event search using superconducting thermometers
Searches for dark matter.
- Looks for the energy of a collision between dark-matter particles and the detector using sensors cooled to within a fraction of a degree of absolute zero.
MASSIMO BREGA, THE LIGHTHOUSE/SPL
DAMA
Dark matter project
Searches for dark matter.
- Looks for flashes of light given off when dark-matter particles hit atoms in sodium iodide crystals. It has tracked such signals for the past 13 years.
ERIC VANDEVILLE/ABACA/PA
GERDA
Germanium detector array
Studies neutrino-less double beta decay
- Monitors a block of germanium-76 for an extremely rare form of radioactivity that can occur only if neutrinos are their own antiparticles.
- Could verify or reject a controversial claim that such a signal was detected by another experiment at the laboratory in 2001.
ENRICO SACCHETTI
LVD
Large volume detector
Studies supernova neutrinos.
- Looks for neutrino collisions with atoms inside a 1,000-tonne tank of liquid scintillator. Has been in operation, with upgrades, since 1992.
- Because neutrinos emerge from a supernova several hours before light does, the LVD can help give astronomers early warning that a star has detonated, and so allow them to observe it with minimal delay.
ENRICO SACCHETTI
OPERA
Oscillation project with emulsion-tracking apparatus
Studies neutrino oscillations.
- Uses photographic film to capture evidence of neutrinos switching from one type (flavour) to another in a beam sent from CERN near Geneva. Saw the first oscillation from muon to tau neutrinos.
- Sparked worldwide excitement when it measured neutrino velocities faster than light, although that measurement was later put down to experimental error.
ENRICO SACCHETTI
ICARUS
Imaging cosmic and rare underground signals
Studies neutrino oscillations.
- Uses two 20-metre tanks filled with liquid argon to look for tau neutrinos oscillating into existence in a muon neutrino beam from CERN in Geneva.
- Contested OPERA's 'faster than light' neutrinos by seeing no evidence for superluminal velocities in its measurements.
Yury Suvorov
DarkSide
Depleted argon cryogenic scintillation and ionization detection
Searches for dark matter.
- Designed to minimize spurious signals from cosmic rays and radioactivity in the surrounding rocks, this experiment looks for collisions between atoms and dark-matter particles in a tank of liquid argon.
- To eliminate an additional source of spurious signals, the detector uses argon depleted of the element's most common radioactive isotope, argon-39.
- A prototype is currently operating using 10 kilograms of argon; a 50-kg version should be online by the end of 2012.
ENRICO SACCHETTI
XENON100
Studies dark matter.
- Uses liquid xenon to hunt for dark-matter particles, but has yet to see evidence for them, directly contradicting results from the nearby DAMA experiment.
VOLKER STEGER/SPL
Borexino
Studies solar neutrinos.
- Uses a set-up of concentric spheres buffered inside ultrapure water to look at the entire energy spectrum of solar neutrinos.
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