Position calibration in the deep sea is typically done by means of acoustic multilateration using three or more acoustic emitters installed at known positions. Rather than using hydrophones as receivers that are exposed to the ambient pressure, the sound signals can be coupled to piezo ceramics glued to the inside of existing containers for electronics or measuring instruments of a deep sea infrastructure. The ANTARES neutrino telescope operated from 2006 until 2022 in the Mediterranean Sea at a depth exceeding 2000 m. It comprised nearly 900 glass spheres with 432 mm diameter and 15 mm thickness, equipped with photomultiplier tubes to detect Cherenkov light from tracks of charged elementary particles. In an experimental setup within ANTARES, piezo sensors have been glued to the inside of such – otherwise empty – glass spheres. These sensors recorded signals from acoustic emitters with frequencies from 46545 to 60235 Hz. Two waves propagating through the glass sphere are found as a result of the excitation by the waves in the water. These can be qualitatively associated with symmetric and asymmetric Lamb-like waves of zeroth order: a fast (early) one with v_e ≈ 5 mm/μs and a slow (late) one with v_ℓ≈ 2 mm/μs . Taking these findings into account improves the accuracy of the position calibration. The results can be transferred to the KM3NeT neutrino telescope, currently under construction at multiple sites in the Mediterranean Sea, for which the concept of piezo sensors glued to the inside of glass spheres has been adapted for monitoring the positions of the photomultiplier tubes.

KM3NeT/ORCA is an underwater neutrino telescope under construction in the Mediterranean Sea. Its primary scientific goal is to measure the atmospheric neutrino oscillation parameters and to determine the neutrino mass ordering. ORCA can constrain the oscillation parameters $\Delta m^{2}_{31}$ and $\theta_{23}$ by reconstructing the arrival direction and energy of multi-GeV neutrinos crossing the Earth. Searches for deviations from the Standard Model of particle physics in the forward scattering of neutrinos inside Earth matter, produced by Non-Standard Interactions, can be conducted by investigating distortions of the standard oscillation pattern of neutrinos of all flavours. This work reports on the results of the search for non-standard neutrino interactions using the first six detection units of ORCA and 433 kton-years of exposure. No significant deviation from standard interactions was found in a sample of 5828 events reconstructed in the 1 GeV$-$1 TeV energy range. The flavour structure of the non-standard coupling was constrained at 90\% confidence level to be $|\varepsilon_{\mu\tau} | \leq 5.4 \times 10^{-3}$, $|\varepsilon_{e\tau} | \leq 7.4 \times 10^{-2}$, $|\varepsilon_{e\mu} | \leq 5.6 \times 10^{-2}$ and $-0.015 \leq \varepsilon_{\tau\tau} - \varepsilon_{\mu\mu} \leq 0.017$. The results are comparable to the current most stringent limits placed on the parameters by other experiments.

In the era of precision measurements of neutrino oscillation parameters, it is necessary for experiments to disentangle discrepancies that may indicate physics beyond the Standard Model in the neutrino sector. KM3NeT/ORCA is a water Cherenkov neutrino detector under construction and anchored at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. The detector is designed to study the oscillations of atmospheric neutrinos and determine the neutrino mass ordering. This paper focuses on the initial configuration of ORCA, referred to as ORCA6, which comprises six out of the foreseen 115 detection units of photosensors. A high-purity neutrino sample was extracted during 2020 and 2021, corresponding to an exposure of 433 kton-years. This sample is analysed following a binned log-likelihood approach to search for invisible neutrino decay, in a three-flavour neutrino oscillation scenario, where the third neutrino mass state ν3 decays into an invisible state, e.g. a sterile neutrino. The resulting best fit of the invisible neutrino decay parameter is α_3=0.92_-0.57^+1.08×10^-4 eV2, corresponding to a scenario with θ23 in the second octant and normal neutrino mass ordering. The results are consistent with the Standard Model, within a 2.1 σ interval.

The silicon strip sensors for the Micro Vertex Detector (MVD) of the PANDA experiment must provide both the Time of Arrival (ToA) and the charge released by the crossing particle. In order to cope with these requirements a 64-channel dedicated ASIC, named ToASt, has been designed and extensively tested. Each channel includes a charge-sensitive amplifier, a current mode shaper, a linear Time over Threshold (ToT) stage and double threshold discrimination. The ToA and ToT are obtained by storing the value of a 12-bit time stamp at the two edges of the comparator. The two values are immediately readout by a digital interface, formatted in 32-bit words and transmitted, via two 160 MS/s serial links.The ToASt ASIC is designed in a commercial CMOS 110 nm technology. Its digital logic has been triplicated in order to improve its Single-Event Upset (SEU) protection.

Neutrinos described as an open quantum system may interact with the environment which introduces stochastic perturbations to their quantum phase. This mechanism leads to a loss of coherence along the propagation of the neutrino - a phenomenon commonly referred to as decoherence - and ultimately, to a modification of the oscillation probabilities. Fluctuations in space-time, as envisaged by various theories of quantum gravity, are a potential candidate for a decoherence-inducing environment. Consequently, the search for decoherence provides a rare opportunity to investigate quantum gravitational effects which are usually beyond the reach of current experiments. In this work, quantum decoherence effects are searched for in neutrino data collected by the KM3NeT/ORCA detector from January 2020 to November 2021. The analysis focuses on atmospheric neutrinos within the energy range of a few GeV to 100 GeV. Adopting the open quantum system framework, decoherence is described in a phenomenological manner with the strength of the effect given by the parameters Γ_21 and Γ_31. Following previous studies, a dependence of the type Γ_ij∝ (E/E_0)^n on the neutrino energy is assumed and the cases n = -2,-1 are explored. No significant deviation with respect to the standard oscillation hypothesis is observed. Therefore, 90 % CL upper limits are estimated as Γ_21 < 4.6· 10^-21GeV and Γ_31 < 8.4· 10^-21GeV for n = -2, and Γ_21 < 1.9· 10^-22GeV and Γ_31 < 2.7· 10^-22GeV for n = -1, respectively.

Radiation damage tests in hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) flexible flux and dose-measuring devices have been performed with a 3-MeV proton beam, to evaluate combined displacement and total ionizing dose damage. The tested devices had two different configurations and thicknesses. The first device was a 2-mu m-thick n-i-p diode having a 5 x 5 mm area. The second device was a 5-mu m-thick charge-selective contact (CSC) detector having the same area. Both the devices were deposited on a flexible polyimide substrate and were irradiated up to the fluence of 1016 neq/cm(2). The response to different proton fluxes has been measured before irradiation and after irradiation at 1016 neq/cm(2) for CSCs and n-i-p devices. The effect of annealing for partial performance recovery at 100 degrees C for 12 h was also studied, and a final characterization on annealed devices was performed. This test is the first combined displacement and total ionizing dose test on flexible a-Si:H devices.

The Micro-Vertex Detector (MVD) is the innermost subdetector of the PANDA (anti Proton ANnihilations at DArmstadt) detector at FAIR. Its microstrip sensors are read out by custom front-end electronics called ToASt (Torino ASIC for Strip readout) [1]. The ToASt chips are locally managed by an MDC (Module Data Concentrator) [2]. The MDC processes incoming event and forwards them to the off-detector readout cards based on the AMC (Advanced Mezzanine Card) standard. Both the MDC and the AMC readout card are currently under development at KIT The complete readout chain, including the double-sided microstrip sensor read by the ToASt chips and the FPGA implementation of the MDC, was successfully tested during a 2023 beam test COSY (Forschungszentrum J & uuml;lich). This proof-of-concept validation of the MDC logic paves way for the forthcoming ASIC version of the MDC, which is planned for submission in February 2025. Extensive performance characterization of the current readout chain has been achieved with MDC-FPGA optically connected to an AMD-Xilinx ZCU102 evaluation card [4], which emulates the AMC off-detector card, through a Versatile Link+ Demo Board (VLDB+) [5]. This contribution presents the MDC-ASIC design, its integration with both the front-end and back-end electronics the performance results of the complete readout chain.

High-significance evidences of the existence of a high-energy diffuse flux of cosmic neutrinos have emerged in the last decade from several observations by the IceCube Collaboration. The ANTARES neutrino telescope took data for 15 years in the Mediterranean Sea, from 2007 to 2022, and collected a high-purity all-flavour neutrino sample. The search for a diffuse cosmic neutrino signal using this dataset is presented in this article. This final analysis did not provide a statistically significant observation of the cosmic diffuse flux: this is converted into limits on the properties of the cosmic neutrino spectrum. In particular, given the sensitivity of the ANTARES neutrino telescope between 1 and 50 TeV, constraints on single-power-law hypotheses are derived for the cosmic diffuse flux below 20 TeV.

The KM3NeT neutrino telescope is currently being deployed at two different sites in the Mediterranean Sea. First searches for astrophysical neutrinos have been performed using data taken with the partial detector configuration already in operation. The paper presents the results of two independent searches for neutrinos from compact binary mergers detected during the third observing run of the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave interferometers. The first search looks for a global increase in the detector counting rates that could be associated with inverse beta decay events generated by MeV-scale electron anti-neutrinos. The second one focuses on upgoing track-like events mainly induced by muon (anti-)neutrinos in the GeV--TeV energy range. Both searches yield no significant excess for the sources in the gravitational wave catalogs. For each source, upper limits on the neutrino flux and on the total energy emitted in neutrinos in the respective energy ranges have been set. Stacking analyses of binary black hole mergers and neutron star-black hole mergers have also been performed to constrain the characteristic neutrino emission from these categories.

The NUMEN (NUclear Matrix Elements for Neutrinoless double beta decay) project aims to access information on the neutrinoless double beta decay nuclear matrix elements through the study of the heavy-ion induced double charge exchange reactions for all beta beta decay candidate targets. Since Te-130 is a candidate nucleus for beta beta decay, the Ne-20 + Te-130 collision was experimentally investigated multi-channel approach by measuring the double charge exchange reaction the complete net of reaction channels characterized by the same initial state interaction. The goal of such a study is to fully characterize the properties of the nuclear wavefunctions entering in the 0v beta beta decay nuclear matrix elements. The relevant experimental campaign was carried out at INFN-Laboratori Nazionali del Sud Catania, Italy by using the Superconducting Cyclotron to accelerate the heavy beams and the MAGNEX magnetic spectrometer to detect the reaction ejectiles. The experimental challenges and the obtained results for the collision under study are briefly presented and discussed.

. - A full-comprehensive study of heavy-ion induced nuclear reac-tions is a powerful tool to characterize nuclear mean-field features as well as few-nucleon correlations in low-lying nuclear states. In this context, the investigation of 76Se(18O,17O)75Se and 76Se(18O,19F)75As transfer reactions was performed with the NUMEN project, aiming at providing data-driven information to constrain nu-clear structure models for the 76Se nucleus. This nucleus is under investigation since it is the daughter nucleus of 76Ge in the neutrinoless double beta decay (0 nu 1313) pro-cess. The experiment was performed at INFN-LNS where the 18O beam impinged the 76Se target and the reaction ejectiles were momentum analyzed by the MAGNEX magnetic spectrometer.

The measurement of the flux of muons produced in cosmic ray air showers is essential for the study of primary cosmic rays. Such measurements are important in extensive air shower detectors to assess the energy spectrum and the chemical composition of the cosmic ray flux, complementary to the information provided by fluorescence detectors. Detailed simulations of the cosmic ray air showers are carried out, using codes such as CORSIKA, to estimate the muon flux at sea level. These simulations are based on the choice of hadronic interaction models, for which improvements have been implemented in the post-LHC era. In this work, a deficit in simulations that use state-of-the-art QCD models with respect to the measurement deep underwater with the KM3NeT neutrino detectors is reported. The KM3NeT/ARCA and KM3NeT/ORCA neutrino telescopes are sensitive to TeV muons originating mostly from primary cosmic rays with energies around 10 TeV. The predictions of state-of-the-art QCD models show that the deficit with respect to the data is constant in zenith angle; no dependency on the water overburden is observed. The observed deficit at a depth of several kilometres is compatible with the deficit seen in the comparison of the simulations and measurements at sea level.

The PANDA (antiProton ANnihilation at DArmstadt) experiment will study the strong interaction in annihilation reactions between an antiproton beam and a stationary cluster jet target. The PANDA detector will be composed of several sub -detectors designed for tracking, particle identification and calorimetry. The Micro -Vertex Detector (MVD) is the innermost part of the tracking system surrounding the interaction region, which is designed for precise vertex and tracking detection. It consists of silicon pixel and double -sided microstrip detectors. For the readout of the microstrip sensors an ASIC called ToASt (Torino Asic for Strip readout) is being developed in 0.11 mu m CMOS technology

The study of the one-neutron transfer reaction in the 18 O+ 48 Ti collision at the energy of 275 MeV was performed as part of the multi-channel approach which is performed within the NUMEN project. That is to measure the complete reaction network characterized by the same initial and final state interactions as the more suppressed double charge exchange reactions. In this respect, angular distribution measurements for one- and two-nucleon transfer reactions in the 18 O+ 48 Ti collision were performed at the MAGNEX facility of INFN-LNS in Catania. This contribution summarizes the main findings from the analysis of the one-neutron transfer reaction.

The study of single-nucleon transfer reactions for the 18O+48Ti system was pursued at the energy of 275 MeV as part of a more systematic study which is undertaken within the NUMEN and NURE experimental campaigns. The aim is to measure the complete set of available reaction network which are characterized by the same initial and final-state wavefunctions as the more suppressed double charge exchange reactions. Understanding the degree of competition between successive nucleon transfer and double charge exchange reactions is crucial for the description of the meson-exchange mechanism. In this respect, angular distribution measurements for one- and twonucleon transfer reactions for the 18O+48Ti system were carried out at theMAGNEX facility of INFN-LNS in Catania. An overview of the data analysis for the 48Ti(18O,19F)47Sc and 48Ti(18O,17O)49Ti reactions will be presented.

In the context of the NUMEN project, the 18O + 48Ti collision at 275 MeV incident energy was studied for the first time. In the adopted multichannel approach, the elastic scattering was measured in order to deduce the initial state interaction and the corresponding optical potential. The angular distribution of elastic scattering was determined across a wide range of scattering angles.

Active galaxies, especially blazars, are among the most promising extragalactic candidates for high-energy neutrino sources. To date, ANTARES searches included these objects and used GeV–TeV γ -ray flux to select blazars. Here, a statistically complete blazar sample selected by their bright radio emission is used as the target for searches of origins of neutrinos collected by the ANTARES neutrino telescope over 13 yr of operation. The hypothesis of a neutrino–blazar directional correlation is tested by pair counting and a complementary likelihood-based approach. The resulting posttrial p -value is 3.0% (2.2 σ in the two-sided convention). Additionally, a time-dependent analysis is performed to search for temporal clustering of neutrino candidates as a means of detecting neutrino flares in blazars. None of the investigated sources alone reaches a significant flare detection level. However, the presence of 18 sources with a pretrial significance above 3 σ indicates a p = 1.4% (2.5 σ in the two-sided convention) detection of a time-variable neutrino flux. An a posteriori investigation reveals an intriguing temporal coincidence of neutrino, radio, and γ -ray flares of the J0242+1101 blazar at a p = 0.5% (2.9 σ in the two-sided convention) level. Altogether, the results presented here suggest a possible connection of neutrino candidates detected by the ANTARES telescope with radio-bright blazars.

KM3NeT/ORCA is a water Cherenkov neutrino detector under construction and anchored at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. The detector is designed to study oscillations of atmospheric neutrinos and determine the neutrino mass ordering. This paper focuses on an initial configuration of ORCA, referred to as ORCA6, which comprises six out of the foreseen 115 detection units of photo-sensors. A high-purity neutrino sample was extracted, corresponding to an exposure of 433 kton-years. The sample of 5828 neutrino candidates is analysed following a binned log-likelihood method in the reconstructed energy and cosine of the zenith angle. The atmospheric oscillation parameters are measured to be sin^2θ_23=0.51_-0.05^+0.04 , and Δm_31^2=2.18_-0.35^+0.25×10^-3eV^2∪{-2.25,-1.76}×10^-3 eV2 at 68

First prototypes of large area, p-n junction, silicon carbide (SiC) detectors have been produced as part of an ongoing programme to develop a new particle identification wall for the focal plane detector of the MAGNEX magnetic spectrometer, in preparation for future NUMEN experimental campaigns. First characterizations of sensors from two wafers obtained with epitaxial silicon carbide growth and with different doping concentration are presented. Current (I-V) and capacitance (C-V) characteristics are investigated in order to determine the full depletion voltage and the doping profile. Radioactive a-sources are used to measure the energy resolution and estimate the depletion depth.

Background: Single-charge-exchange reactions are among the most appropriate nuclear tools to study the response of nuclear systems to isovector interaction. Nowadays, the availability of powerful experimental setups and advanced nuclear models bring the possibility of the complete study of the reaction mechanisms involved in the nuclear reactions, also in the case of heavy projectiles. This new possibility allows one to access valuable information on key nuclear structure aspects, including those embedded in the widely searched neutrinoless double-beta decay. Purpose: We intend to elucidate the main nuclear structure and reaction features involved in the 18O + 12C collision at 275 MeV beam incident energy. In this paper, the main focus is to quantify the competition between the sequential two-step transfer and the direct meson-exchange reaction mechanisms. Methods: The energy spectra and cross-section angular distributions for the 12C(18O, 18 F) 12B single-charge- exchange reaction are measured by the MAGNEX magnetic spectrometer in the same experimental setup of the elastic and inelastic scattering and the one-nucleon transfer reaction channels. The cross sections for the sequential two-step transfer and the direct meson-exchange single-charge-exchange reaction mechanisms are evaluated in a single coherent theoretical calculation, using state-of-the-art nuclear structure and reaction theories. Results: The energy resolution achieved in the study of the 12C(18O, 18 F) 12B single-charge-exchange reaction allows one to separate the ground-to-ground-state transition and to identify other structures in the measured energy spectra. The coherent sum of the distorted wave Born approximation cross sections of the direct and sequential reaction mechanisms well describes the experimental cross-section angular distributions. The crucial role of the optical model distortion in the scattering of the incoming and outgoing waves was taken into account via the introduction of the coupled-channel local equivalent effective potential. Conclusions: Advanced nuclear structure and reaction models turned out to be appropriate tools for the detailed analysis of single-charge-exchange reactions originating in heavy-ion collisions. This is of particular relevance in several fields of nuclear physics. Moreover, it is inherent to the challenging project to provide valuable information on neutrinoless double-beta decay nuclear matrix elements from single- and double-charge-exchange cross-section measurements.