EUROLABS Financial Support

The Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro (LNL) and Laboratori Nazionali del Sud (LNS) are two research infrastructures of the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) and are devoted to Fundamental and Applied Nuclear Physics Research. Their activities are complementary and strictly coordinated, representing the main Italian facility for low energy nuclear physics experiments. The current contract within the Horizon Europe framework for trans-national access programme of the EU project EURO-LABS (Grant no. 101057511) offers support for travel and subsistence for external users of the facility. Within the EURO-LABS project, the LNL-LNS facility offers access to stable-ion beams (WP2, Task 1), radioactive ion beams (WP2, Task 2) and to neutron beams, delivered by the BELINA facility at LNL (WP2, Task 3).

Index

Description of the infrastructure

The LNL-LNS facility is based in two different sites (Laboratories): LNL and LNS.

The LNL site

LNL site comprises two single stage electrostatic accelerators, CN (6 MV maximum voltage) and AN2000 (2 MV maximum voltage), and the machines in the TANDEM-PIAVE-ALPI complex. A 70 MeV proton cyclotron is also in operation as a driver of the SPES ISOL facility. The TANDEM-PIAVE-ALPI (TAP) complex features and electrostatic XTU TANDEM which can reach 14 MV and can be operated in stand-alone mode or as an injector of the 50 MV-equivalent superconducting ALPI LINAC accelerator. The superconducting PIAVE RFQ acts as a second injector for ALPI, and is equipped with and ECR source, for high intensity beams or species that cannot be accelerated from the TANDEM accelerator. Beams from the TANDEM-PIAVE-ALPI complex, included the future exotic beams from SPES, can be delivered to three different experimental halls: the first experimental hall hosts the beam lines for applied physics, the beam line of the EXOTIC in-flight facility and the beam line dedicated to the AGATA-PRISMA setup for nuclear physics studies. The second experimental hall hosts the PISOLO and 8PLPI arrays for reaction studies and the resident gamma-ray array GALILEO. The third experimental hall hosts the Garfield array for reaction studies. The 70P cyclotron can accelerate H- ions, to final energies varying from 35 to 70 MeV, with dual beam extraction and a maximum beam current of 750 µA. The beam can be delivered to the SPES ISOL target station as well as to other bunkers for irradiation and radioisotope production. The ALPI LINAC together with the new ADIGE norm conducting RFQ injector will act as the post-accelerator of the ISOL facility. Once operational, the SPES facility will become part of the LNL accelerator facilities.

The LNS site

The 15 MV SMP Tandem accelerator at LNS providing heavy-ion beams from protons to gold up to energies of few MeV/u. The Superconducting Cyclotron at LNS providing a wide variety of heavy-ion beams with energies up to 80 MeV/u for light ions completely ionised and 20 MeV/A for heavier ions, like 238U38+. The LNS Superconducting Cyclotron will be equipped with a second beam extraction system to increase the intensity of stable beams. This will allow the use of the new FRAgment Ion Separator (FRAISE) for exotic beams production via projectile fragmentation. The FRAISE facility will come into operation during the period of the offered access.Applied, interdisciplinary and biomedical physics activities are based on the CATANA facility at LNS where, besides the proton-therapy, biomedical physics experiments using proton and carbon beams from the cyclotron are performed.

Services currently offered by the infrastructure

The list of the available beams for LNL TAP

The list of the available beams for LNL AN2000 and CN

Neutrons are available in the BELINA facility, using the CN proton beam and a dedicated target. For more details contact the EUROLABS facility coordinator or Doctor Pierfrancesco Mastinu.

Radioactive ion beams: the SPES facility at LNL is not yet operational. Details will be provided as soon as beams for users will be available.

The list of the available beams for LNS

Both facilities offer the following services:
• A Target Laboratory to produce targets and thin films depositions for nuclear physics experiments and interdisciplinary projects
• Technical assistance for the installation of new set-ups, the maintenance of vacuum instrumentation, pumping systems, electrical components, and mechanical parts of the existing apparatuses
• A computing centre and Data Acquisition Services for specific setups
The LNL site offers also:

• A Detector Laboratory among the most advanced laboratories in Europe for testing and repairing High-Purity Germanium detectors
• A surface technology and superconductivity laboratory
• An electronic laboratory for developing and repairing electronic devices;
• A laboratory for detector testing
• Cellular and molecular biology laboratories
Proposed experiments requesting access to LNL or LNS are evaluated scientifically by the Program advisory Committee (PAC).

LNL PAC

LNS PAC

Support offered under the EURO-LABS contract

The Euro-Labs project provides support for transnational access to a network of 47 Research Infrastructures (including 3 RIs with Virtual Access) from 18 countries, including the LNL-LNS facility.
EURO-LABS offers:

  • reimbursement of travel and accommodation costs for using the facilities at the research infrastructures
  • technical Support and expertise at the laboratories hosting the RI
  • general procedure for applying to EURO-LABS support


The procedures and details about Transnational Access are described in the EURO-LABS website.
The LNL-LNS facility belongs to the Work-Package 2. Please visit the dedicated webpage about the TNA access procedure.

  1. Experiment proposals are submitted to the Program Advisory Committee of the LNL or LNS laboratory.
    a. Info about accelerators for LNL users
    b. Info about accelerators for LNS users
    c. Verify here who is eligible for EURO-LABS funding. If the proposal fulfils the eligibility criteria, TNA can be requested.
  2. The spokesperson of an approved experiment that has been scheduled should fill and sign the application form and the information request (forms) and deliver them to either the LNL or LNS facility coordinator, Tommaso Marchi for LNL or Alessia Di Pietro for LNS.
  3. The User Selection Panel, which consists of two outside members, and the two facility coordinators for LNL and LNS, will validate the requests and authorise the funds.
  4. Supported users will then have to follow the reimbursement procedure explained in a dedicated document.
  5. Regulations on the exploitation of the results are applied. Please read them carefully and comply to it.
  6. Experiment report must be completed by the experiment spokesperson within one week after the experiment and sent to the LNL or LNS facility coordinator, Tommaso Marchi for LNL or Alessia Di Pietro for LNS.
  7. Experiment Attendance Form must be completed by the experiment spokesperson (only if the information is different to that submitted in step 1) within one month after the experiment
  8. Questionnaire must be completed by the experiment spokesperson and submitted to Brussels.
  9. Acknowledge EURO-LABS in publications. (Example: “The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 101057511.”)

Modality of access under the EURO-LABS contract

LNL-LNS users are registered through the respective User’s Offices, following the standard User’s registration procedures. More detail can be found in the dedicated pages:
LNL
LNS
The registration allows to have full access to the services offered by the facility. The authorization to operate in radiation-controlled areas (if needed) is managed by the Radiation Protection Service and requires the submission of specific documentation.
In addition to the access procedures, Users benefiting of EURO-LABS financial support will need to accomplish the EURO-LABS registration and reimbursement procedures described in the following.

Support offered under the EURO-LABS contract

Please contact Tiziano Ferro (tiziano.ferro@NOSPAM.lnf.infn.it)

Outreach of new users

work in progress

Review procedure under the EURO-LABS contract

work in progress

Data management requirement

The EURO-LABS Grant Agreement imposes certain obligations on those receiving funding. These differ from the requirements of the previous TNA scheme ENSAR2 but the most important of these for experiments are in terms of acknowledging support and in Open Science. All experiments need to have a data management plan, they need to secure and preserve the data from the experiment in a suitable repository and to make the data publicly available at a suitable time. For most experiments, this is likely to be after the initial publication(s). Such arrangements are becoming very common as requirements by national funding agencies.

Logo

EUROLABS logo

Materials

kick-off meeting in Bologna on 3-4-5 October 2022

EUROLABS Video INFN LNL (pwd= Video2023!)