The Pauli Exclusion Principle is one of the basic principles of modern physics and is at the very basis of our understanding of matter: thus it is fundamental importance to test the limits of its validity. Here we present the VIP (Violation of the Pauli Exclusion Principle) experiment, where we search for anomalous X-rays emitted by copper atoms in a conductor: any detection of these anomalous X-rays would mark a Pauli-forbidden transition. ] VIP is currently taking data at the Gran Sasso underground laboratories, and its scientific goal is to improve by at least four orders of magnitude the previous limit on the probability of Pauli violating transitions, bringing it into the 10**-29 - 10**-30 region. First experimental results, together with future plans, are presented.
@article{arxiv.0803.0870,
title = {New experimental limit on Pauli Exclusion Principle violation by electrons (the VIP experiment)},
author = {C. Curceanu Petrascu and S. Bartalucci and S. Bertolucci and M. Bragadireanu and M. Cargnelli and M. Catitti and S. Di Matteo and J. -P. Egger and C. Guaraldo and M. Iliescu and T. Ishiwatari and M. Laubenstein and J. Marton and E. Milotti and D. Pietreanu and T. Ponta and D. L. Sirghi and F. Sirghi and L. Sperandio and O. Vazquez Doce and E. Widmann and J. Zmeskal},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0803.0870},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
To appear in proceedings of the XLVI International Winter Meeting on Nuclear Physics, Bormio, Italy, January 20-26, 2008