Related papers: The MESA physics program
The 'Neutrino Experiment with a Xenon TPC (NEXT)', intended to investigate neutrinoless double beta decay, requires extremely low background levels. An extensive material screening and selection process to assess the radioactivity of…
The DAMA experiment searches for Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) dark matter via its expected but rare interactions within the detector, where the interaction rates will modulate throughout the year due to the orbital motion of…
Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are candidates for non-baryonic Dark Matter. WIMPs are supposed to interact with baryonic matter via scattering off nuclei producing a nuclear recoil with energies up to a few 10 keV with a very…
The constituents of dark matter are still unknown, and the viable possibilities span a vast range of masses. The physics community has established searching for sub-GeV dark matter as a high priority and identified accelerator-based…
A new experiment is proposed with the aim to study eta-mesic nuclei and low-energy interactions of eta with nuclei. Two decay modes of eta produced by a photon beam inside a nucleus will be observed, namely a collisional decay \eta N \to…
Two GEM telescopes, each consisting of three 10x10 cm$^2$ triple-GEM chambers were built, tested and operated by the Hampton University group. The GEMs are read out with APV25 frontend chips and FPGA based digitizing electronics developed…
The search for new comparably light (well below the electroweak scale) feebly interacting particles is an exciting possibility to explain some mysterious phenomena in physics, among them the origin of Dark Matter. The sensitivity study…
Double beta decay is indispensable to solve the question of the neutrino mass matrix together with $\nu$ oscillation experiments. The most sensitive experiment since eight years - the Heidelberg-Moscow experiment in Gran-Sasso - already…
This thesis explores experimental and theoretical approaches to dark matter detection, from gas-based detectors to quantum sensors, tackling the challenge of identifying dark matter, which makes up 27% of the Universe's energy. It reviews…
The irradiation with fast ions with kinetic energies of > 10 MeV leads to the deposition of a high amount of energy along their trajectory (up to several ten keV/nm). The energy is mainly transferred to the electronic subsystem and induces…
This document describes the concept of a primary electron beam facility at CERN, to be used for dark gauge force and light dark matter searches. The electron beam is produced in three stages: A Linac accelerates electrons from a…
We report on a search for a new $Z'$ ($L_\mu-L_\tau$) vector boson performed at the NA64 experiment employing a high energy muon beam and a missing energy-momentum technique. Muons from the M2 beamline at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron…
SPEED2 is a generator based on Marx technology and was designed in the University of Dusseldorf. SPEED2 consists on 40 +/- Marx modules connected in parallel (4.1 mF equivalent Marx generator capacity, 300 kV, 4 MA in short circuit, 187 kJ,…
Background: we develop the concept of a Micromegas (MICRO-MEsh GAseous Structure) readout plane with an additional GEM (Gas Electron Multiplier) preamplification stage placed a few mm above it, to increase the maximum effective gain of the…
The PandaX project consists of a series of xenon-based experiments that are used to search for dark matter (DM) particles and to study the fundamental properties of neutrinos. The next DM experiment PandaX-4T will be using 4 ton liquid…
Neutrino physics is nowadays receiving more and more attention as a possible source of information for the long-standing problem of new physics beyond the Standard Model. The recent measurement of the mixing angle $\theta_{13}$ in the…
Underground searches for dark matter involve a complicated interplay of particle physics, nuclear physics, atomic physics and astrophysics. We attempt to remove the uncertainties associated with astrophysics by developing the means to map…
Recent progress in neutron spin-echo spectroscopy by means of longitudinal Modulation of IntEnsity with Zero Effort (MIEZE) is reviewed. Key technical characteristics are summarized which highlight that the parameter range accessible in…
The physics programme and the design are described of a new collider for particle and nuclear physics, the Large Hadron Electron Collider (LHeC), in which a newly built electron beam of 60 GeV, up to possibly 140 GeV, energy collides with…
Magnetic reconnection regions in space and astrophysics are known as active particle acceleration sites. There is ample evidence showing that energetic particles can take a substantial amount of converted energy during magnetic…