Related papers: Ettore Majorana and his heritage seventy years lat…
The Varenna school is a hub where generations of physicists, including numerous Nobel laureates, have shaped the field, often through collaborative exchanges across political and cultural boundaries. We examine the scientific legacy of…
The study of neutrinoless double-beta decay plays a fundamental role in the understanding of neutrino physics. Its observation would prove that neutrinos are Majorana particles and that lepton number is not conserved. Experimental searches…
A theoretical model describing neutron-proton scattering developed by Majorana as early as in 1932, is discussed in detail with the experiments that motivated it. Majorana using collisions' theory, obtained the explicit expression of…
Today, February 11, is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, the perfect day to remember Mileva Mari\'{c} Einstein, a brilliant but largely unknown scientist. While her husband, Albert Einstein is celebrated as perhaps the…
Between 1900 and 1913 several people were investigating about the unknown radiation, later identified as Cosmic Rays. Several experimentalist tried to identify the origin of this radiation and in particular Victor Franz Hess, Theodor Wulf…
James Philip Elliott, one of the towering figures of nuclear physics of the second half of the twentieth century, died on the 21st of October 2008. Obituaries appeared in the British press but relatively little attention was paid by the…
Neutrinos are the most elusive among the known elementary particles, because of their feeble interactions with ordinary matter. They are also the most mysterious, because of their tiny masses that suggest a novel mass generating mechanism,…
Detlef D\"urr (1951-2021) was a theoretical and mathematical physicist who worked particularly on the foundations of quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, and statistical mechanics. This piece is a rather personal look back at him and his…
These lectures describe some aspects of the physics of massive neutrinos. After a brief introduction of neutrinos in the Standard Model, I discuss possible patterns for their masses. In particular, I show how the presence of a large…
Neutrinos are the only fundamental fermions which have no electric charges. Because of that neutrinos have no direct electromagnetic interaction and at relatively small energies they can take part only in weak processes with virtual…
Experimental observation of Majorana fermion matter gives a new impetus to the understanding of the Lorentz symmetry and its extension, the geometrical properties of the ambient space-time structure, matter--antimatter symmetry and some new…
The neutrinoless double $\beta$-decay of nuclei is reviewed. We discuss neutrino mixing and 3x3 PMNS neutrino mixing matrix. Basic theory of neutrinoless double $\beta$-decay is presented in some details. Results of different calculations…
A search for neutrinoless $\beta\beta$ decay processes accompanied with Majoron emission has been performed using data collected during Phase I of the GERmanium Detector Array (GERDA) experiment at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso of…
Theoretical physics suffered a major loss with the death of my dear friend Jan Zaanen on January 18. This note is my remembrance of him.
Freeman J. Dyson, a brilliant theoretical physicist and a gifted mathematician, passed away on 28 February 2020 at the age of 96. A vignette of his outstanding contributions to physical sciences, ranging from the subject of quantum…
The objective of the Majorana Experiment is to study neutrinoless double beta decay (0nbb) with an effective Majorana-neutrino mass sensitivity below 50 meV in order to characterize the Majorana nature of the neutrino, the Majorana mass…
The electric dipole moment of the electron, $d_e$, is known to vanish up to thre e-loops in the standard model with massless neutrinos. However, if neutrinos are massive Majorana particles, we obtain the result that $d_e$ induced by…
Since the discovery of nuclear beta decay, nuclear physicists have studied the weak interaction and the nature of neutrinos. Many recent and current experiments have been focused on the elucidation of neutrino oscillations and neutrino…
Dawning neutron physics was more complex than one might expect. The chance that the neutron comprised a proton and an electron was diffusely taken into account after the discovery of the neutron. Moreover, uncertainties persisted about the…
Fermi helped establish a new framework for understanding matter, based on quantum theory. This framework refines and improves traditional atomism in two crucial respects. First, the elementary constituents of matter belong to a very small…