Fine-grained nuclear emulsion films have been developed as a tracking detector with nanometric spatial resolution to be used in direction-sensitive dark matter searches, thanks to novel readout technologies capable of exploiting this unprecedented resolution. Emulsion detectors are time insensitive. Therefore, a directional dark matter search with such detector requires the use of an equatorial telescope to absorb the Earth rotation effect. We have conducted for the first time a directional dark matter search in an unshielded location, at the sea level, by keeping an emulsion detector exposed for 39 days on an equatorial telescope. The observed angular distribution of the data collected during an exposure equivalent to 0.59 g days agrees with the background model and an exclusion plot was then derived in the dark matter mass and cross-section plane: cross-sections higher than 1.1 $\times$10$^{-28}$ cm$^{2}$ and $1.1 \times 10^{-31}$ cm$^2$ were excluded for a dark matter mass of $10$ GeV$/c^2$ and $100$ GeV$/c^2$, respectively. This is the first direction sensitive search for dark matter with a solid-state, particle tracking detector.

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 $θ_{13}$ in the standard mixing oscillation scenario encourages us to pursue the still missing results on leptonic CP violation and absolute neutrino masses. However, puzzling measurements exist that deserve an exhaustive evaluation. The NESSiE Collaboration has been setup to undertake conclusive experiments to clarify the muon-neutrino disappearance measurements at small $L/E$, which will be able to put severe constraints to models with more than the three-standard neutrinos, or even to robustly measure the presence of a new kind of neutrino oscillation for the first time. To this aim the use of the current FNAL-Booster neutrino beam for a Short-Baseline experiment has been carefully evaluated. This proposal refers to the use of magnetic spectrometers at two different sites, Near and Far. Their positions have been extensively studied, together with the possible performances of two OPERA-like spectrometers. The proposal is constrained by availability of existing hardware and a time-schedule compatible with the CERN project for a new more performant neutrino beam, which will nicely extend the physics results achievable at the Booster. The possible FNAL experiment will allow to clarify the current $ν_μ$ disappearance tension with $ν_e$ appearance and disappearance at the eV mass scale. Instead, a new CERN neutrino beam would allow a further span in the parameter space together with a refined control of systematics and, more relevant, the measurement of the antineutrino sector, by upgrading the spectrometer with detectors currently under R&D study.

The European Scanning System, developed to analyse nuclear emulsions at high speed, has been completed with the development of a high level software infrastructure to automate and support large-scale emulsion scanning. In one year, an average installation is capable of performing data-taking and online analysis on a total surface ranging from few m2 to tens of m2, acquiring many billions of tracks, corresponding to several TB. This paper focuses on the procedures that have been implemented and on their impact on physics measurements. The system proved robust, reliable, fault-tolerant and user-friendly, and seldom needs assistance. A dedicated relational Data Base system is the backbone of the whole infrastructure, storing data themselves and not only catalogues of data files, as in common practice, being a unique case in high-energy physics DAQ systems. The logical organisation of the system is described and a summary is given of the physics measurement that are readily available by automated processing.

Tensions in several phenomenological models grew with experimental results on neutrino/antineutrino oscillations at Short-Baseline (SBL) and with the recent, carefully recomputed, antineutrino fluxes from nuclear reactors. At a refurbished SBL CERN-PS facility an experiment aimed to address the open issues has been proposed [1], based on the technology of imaging in ultra-pure cryogenic Liquid Argon (LAr). Motivated by this scenario a detailed study of the physics case was performed. We tackled specific physics models and we optimized the neutrino beam through a full simulation. Experimental aspects not fully covered by the LAr detection, i.e. the measurements of the lepton charge on event-by-event basis and their energy over a wide range, were also investigated. Indeed the muon leptons from Charged Current (CC) (anti-)neutrino interactions play an important role in disentangling different phenomenological scenarios provided their charge state is determined. Also, the study of muon appearance/disappearance can benefit of the large statistics of CC muon events from the primary neutrino beam. Results of our study are reported in detail in this proposal. We aim to design, construct and install two Spectrometers at "NEAR" and "FAR" sites of the SBL CERN-PS, compatible with the already proposed LAr detectors. Profiting of the large mass of the two Spectrometers their stand-alone performances have also been exploited.