CERN Accelerating science

SME

Closing the gap between beam dump and colliders ALPs searches with NA64

The axion was postulated to provide a solution to the "strong CP" problem. This pseudo-scalar particle emerges as a consequence of the breaking of the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry [1,2,3] (link to EP article on Axions). Typically, models of QCD axions…

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A mobile antiproton reservoir for precision measurements

 The BASE collaboration has performed the most precise measurements of the fundamental properties of the antiproton in order to test CPT invariance as fundamental symmetry of the Standard Model [1, 2] and to search for dark matter-antimatter…

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NA62 experiment at CERN reports first evidence for ultra-rare process sensitive to new physics

The CERN NA62 collaboration presented at the ICHEP 2020 conference the first significant experimental evidence for the ultra-rare decay of the charged kaon into a charged pion and two neutrinos (K+ -> π+νν). The decay process is very sensitive to…

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Pinpointing the structure of the SnV centre in diamond using emission channelling at ISOLDE

Diamond – beyond its allure as a jewel – exhibits an array of unique physical characteristics such as its hardness, the highest room thermal conductivity of any material (while being electrically insulating when undoped); it can also be doped to…

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CLOUD experiment makes its own clouds to study

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recognizes aerosols (small nanometer to micrometer sized particles suspended in air) as the single biggest source of uncertainty in human-driven climate change. Atmospheric aerosol particles are…

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Exotic radioactive molecules could reveal physics beyond the Standard Model

The first spectroscopic study of radium monofluoride (RaF) suggests that these radioactive molecules can be used to perform high precision tests of the Standard Model of particle physics. The study was done at ISOLDE, CERN’s radioactive beam…

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ALPHA publishes first measurements of quantum effects in antimatter

The ALPHA collaboration at CERN has reported the first measurements of fine structure effects and Lamb shift in the energy structure of antihydrogen that provide another test of comparison between antimatter and ordinary matter. The results,…

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ISOLDE dives deeper in the mystery of the odd-even staggering effect

In a recent paper, to appear in Nature Physics in the next weeks (arXiv:1911.08765v3), the CRIS collaboration, located at the ISOLDE facility in CERN, presents measurements of charge radii of exotic copper isotopes that shed further light on one of…

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POLAR-2 project enters final design stage

The POLAR-2 project is a follow-up of the POLAR mission that was launched in 2016, mounted on the exterior of the Chinese Spacelab Tiangong-2. Following its application to the Recognized Experiment Committee earlier this year, it has been…

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MUonE experiment gears up to chase whiff of new physics

A new proposed project, MUonE, was described on the EP Newsletter few months ago [2].  It is an experiment aiming at helping in understanding the long-standing discrepancy between the experimental value and the Standard Model (SM) prediction of the…

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