https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202533303006
Status of the NUMEN Construction
1 Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Napoli, Napoli, Italy
2 Instituto de Física, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México City, México
3 Instituto de Fisica, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
4 Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Laboratori Nazionali del Sud, Catania, Italy
5 Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Nucleares, México
6 School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University, Israel
7 Centro Universitario FEI, Sao Bernardo do Campo, Brazil
8 IGFAE, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
9 Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Genova, Italy
10 Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico
11 Department of Physics, Akdeniz University, Turkey
12 Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Torino, Torino, Italy
13 Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Torino, Italy
14 Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia “Ettore Majorana”, Università di Catania, Catania, Italy
15 Instituto de Fisica, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil
16 Dipartimento di Chimica e Chimica Industriale, Università di Genova, Italy
17 Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, US
18 Ankara University, Institute of Accelerator Technologies, Turkey
19 DISAT, Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy
20 University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli", Caserta, Italy
21 iThemba Laboratory for Accelerator Based Sciences, Faure, Cape Town, South Africa
22 GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH, Darmstadt, Germany
23 Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, México
24 Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Genova, Genova, Italy
25 Recep Tayyip Erdogan University, Department of Physics, Turkey
26 DIMEAS, Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy
27 Department of Chemistry, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and HINP, Greece
28 School of Physics, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
29 Departamento de FAMN, University of Seville, Spain
30 Department of Physics, University of Giessen, Germany
31 Instituto de Pesquisas Energeticas e Nucleares, Sao Paulo, Brazil
32 Florida State University, Florida, US
33 Department of Physics and HINP, University of Ioannina, Greece
34 Institut fur Kernphysik, Technische Universitat Darmstadt, Germany
35 Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Catania, Catania, Italy
36 Department of Nuclear Physics, Horia Hubulei Nat. Inst. Phys. and Nucl. Eng., IFIN-HH, Romania
37 Instituto de Fisica, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil
38 Department of Nuclear Physics and Nanotechnology, L. N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University, Astana, Kazakhstan
39 Institute of Nuclear Physics, Laboratory of Low Energy Reactions, Almaty, Kazakhstan
* dimitra.pierroutsakou@na.infn.it
Published online: 1 August 2025
The NUMEN (NUclear Matrix Elements for Neutrinoless double beta decay) project at INFN-Laboratori Nazionali del Sud aims to extract quantitative information on the Nuclear Matrix Elements relevant to neutrinoless double beta decay, a key process for determining whether the neutrino is a Majorana or Dirac particle and for establishing its effective mass. This objective will be pursued by measuring the cross sections of double charge exchange reactions induced by intense heavy-ion beams on selected isotopes that are candidates for neutrinoless double beta decay. The need to measure extremely low cross sections with high statistical significance has driven a major upgrade of the entire INFN-LNS infrastructure, enabling the production of heavy-ion beams with intensities up to 1013 pps at the position of the experimental target. Additionally, significant enhancements are being made to the focal plane detectors of the existing MAGNEX spectrometer. A new target system and advanced detectors are under development to track and identify heavy ions at an expected rate of 5×106 Hz at full beam intensity, while also allowing γ-ray detection. This contribution provides an overview of the current status of the NUMEN project, highlighting recent developments and characterization campaigns for nuclear targets and detector systems.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2025
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
