Aldo Ianni (Director of the Laboratorio Subterraneo de Canfranc-LSC) and Juan José Gomez-Cadenas (IFIC, Valencia, and Project leader of NEXT at LSC)

When

Contact info

Contact

Enric Vinyals

Website

https://indico.cells.es/indico/event/58/

The Underground Laboratory at Canfranc, Spain, is the second largest deep underground research infrastructure in Europe. This facility is a multidisciplinary international research center.

At Canfranc the main research activities are related to direct dark matter search and neutrinoless double beta decay observation. In addition, geophysical studies are performed by means of two 70 m long laser strainmeters and other instrumentations. Research on biology in extreme environments are also carried out at Canfranc. The infrastructure is supported by a number of service facilities such as a chemistry laboratory and a low counting gamma-spectroscopy set-up. 

In this talk the Canfranc Laboratory will be reviewed. In particular, details will be given on experiments performing at Canfranc and in other laboratories direct dark matter searches with liquid argon and sodium iodide crystal scintillators. 

A review of the NEXT experiment at Canfranc for neutrinoless double beta decay will be presented. NEXT is a high pressure Xe gas TPC with Xe enriched in 136Xe. The set-up allows to measure the energy deposited by ionizing particles in the gas and the topology of tracks. This unique signature enhance the background rejection for the neutrinoless double beta decay search. A comprehensive description of the apparatus will be given.