Latest News
The SuperNEMO collaboration have been busy! Catch up on some of our latest news here.
Congratulations Dr Matteo Ceschia!
It is with great joy that we can announce the outstanding achievement of our very own Matteo Ceschia, who has successfully defended his PhD thesis at University College London (UCL).
Meeting in Edinburgh
SuperNEMO collaborators gathered at the University of Edinburgh’s Pollock Halls this year for the summer collaboration meeting. Over three days, members presented their progress in areas like shielding, analysis, and software, and groups convened to discuss future SuperNEMO work. As a result of the communications discussion group, SuperNEMO now has a presence on Twitter @SuperNEMO_BB! Follow for exciting updates and photos of the collaboration.
January 2023 Meeting in Aussois
SuperNEMO members convened at the Fleurs et Neige Village in Aussois this January. In between great talks on a variety of experiment topics, collaborators took advantage of the lovely clear winter days to enjoy the ski slopes and mountain views. Such topics included updates on the demonstrator module and shielding plans, changes to the gas system, new ideas on Helium recirculation, and demonstrations of analysis techniques in flsimulate and with UDD format data.
Together again!
After more than two challenging years of the Covid-19 pandemic, collaborators reunited for an in-person collaboration meeting near SuperNEMO’s site in the French Alps.
Thank you, Rastislav
As the SuperNEMO Demonstrator commissioning continues, it’s vital to have a great team on site at LSM. With Covid restrictions disrupting international travel, this year has been challenging - so we were very lucky that researcher Dr Rastislav Hodák was able to spend six months working at LSM.
Our newest doctor - Veronika Palušová!
SuperNEMO is very proud of our latest PhD recipient - Dr Veronika Palušová! Veronika gained a joint doctorate from Comenius University in Bratislava and the University of Bordeaux when she defended her dissertation studying potential backgrounds to SuperNEMO’s double-beta-decay search.
Our first double-beta candidate!
Despite the huge challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, SuperNEMO collaborators have been putting in huge efforts to get the SuperNEMO Demonstrator up and running at the LSM. It was a real joy to see a great result - our very first double-beta-decay candidate detected!
Congratulations Dr Ramón Salazar!
Hearty congratulations to the wonderful Dr Ramón Salazar, who has successfully defended his PhD thesis “Calibration and Monitoring Systems for Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay Searches in the SuperNEMO Experiment”.
SuperNEMO's Fedor Šimkovic wins Outstanding Scientist award
Huge congratulations to SuperNEMO and NEMO-3 collaborator Professor Dr.rer.nat. Fedor Šimkovic, CSc, who has won the ESET Science Award, sponsored by the Slovak company ESET.
A virtual conference - Neutrino2020
This year’s Neutrino2020 conference is being held virtually, and while we’re disappointed not to be able to visiting beautiful Chicago, we won’t let it get us down!
Miroslav's thesis scoops Dean's Award
On 14th of October 2019, the annual Dean’s award ceremony took place in the Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia.
NEMO by the sea
The SuperNEMO and NEMO-3 collaborations enjoyed their autumn collaboration meeting this October in a yet another gorgeous spot - the VVF holiday village in Lège-Cap Ferret, on the coast of the Arcachon Bay near Bordeaux in south-west France. The little cabins in the pine forest were a perfect setting for a productive meeting, and it was great to see some real progress on the detector, with commissioning continuing apace.
Congratulations, Dr Ashwin Chopra
Huge congratulations to Ashwin Chopra of University College London, who successfully defended his PhD thesis on May 1st. Ashwin studied the double-beta decay of molybdenum 100 in NEMO-3, looking for evidence of Lorentz violation. Deviations from the Lorentz invariance would break some of the most fundamental laws of physics, like Einstein’s theory of relativity, or the fixed speed of light in a vacuum. Thankfully, as far as we know, these theories still hold true!
Xin wins prize for SuperNEMO thesis
Xin Ran Liu has won the Astroparticle Physics group thesis prize at the Insititute of Physics Annual High-Energy Particle and Astroparticle physics conference in the UK. Xin did his PhD at UCL on low background techniques for SuperNEMO, and is now a postdoc at Edinburgh on LZ.
A sunny collaboration meeting in Annecy
For this spring’s SuperNEMO collaboration meeting, we were welcomed to LAPP, situated in beautiful Annecy, in the French Alps. There was lots to discuss, with a main highlight being the preliminary analysis our very first real live data, as we work on commissioning the SuperNEMO calorimeter walls.
Happy New Year!
Another year is over, and 2018 has been a busy one for SuperNEMO. Here’s a review of some of the exciting things that have happened.
Congratulations! It's Dr Miroslav Macko
SuperNEMO is celebrating again, as Miroslav Macko has successfully defended his PhD thesis. The dissertation was written under supervision of Ivan Štekl and Fabrice Piquemal as a joint degree between Comenius University in Bratislava (Slovakia) and Université de Bordeaux (France). Hard-working Miroslav was also employed by IEAP CTU in Prague, Czech Republic.
Closing the SuperNEMO demonstrator
SuperNEMO has reached an extremely important milestone today, as the Demonstrator Module detector has finally been closed. This is a great achievement by the team, and a huge step towards starting to collect data.
Medals for SuperNEMO collaborators
Two members of the SuperNEMO collaboration have been honoured by the Institute of Physics for their outstanding contributions to experimental particle physics. The photo, from the IoP, shows them displaying their medals.
NEMO-3 makes the cover of EPJ C
Hold the front page! A figure from NEMO-3’s latest paper is featured on the cover of the latest edition of the European Physical Journal C: Particles and Fields.
Congratulations, Dr Guillaume Oliviero
Congratulations are in order for Dr Guillaume Oliviero, who has defended his PhD. Guillaume was supervised by François Mauger, at LPC Caen in France.
New NEMO-3 paper probes nuclear physics
Another NEMO-3 paper has been published! The study, titled Final results on $^{82}$Se double beta decay to the ground state of $^{82}$Kr from the NEMO-3 experiment, was led by Dr James Mott of University College London (now a Research Assistant Professor at Boston University, USA).
SuperNEMO meets in Prague
It’s SuperNEMO collaboration meeting once again, and this time, we are in beautiful Prague!
The tracker is joined!
It’s an exciting week for SuperNEMO as we move another step closer to data, by closing our tracker.
SuperNEMO source foils installed
SuperNEMO has taken an important step towards becoming fully operational, as our selenium source foils were installed in the detector this week.
Getting ready for source foils
SuperNEMO’s source foils are due to be installed next week, so it’s time to open up the detector.
SuperNEMO calibration system in place
For a high-precision experiment like SuperNEMO, it’s vital that we can calibrate our detector’s energy measurements.
SuperNEMO goes to Heidelberg for Neutrino 2018
Members of the SuperNEMO collaboration travelled from all over the world to Heidelberg, Germany for the Neutrino 2018 conference.
Londoners meet SuperNEMO over a Pint Of Science... and a song or two
The annual Pint of Science festival takes place for three consecutive days each May in pubs and bars around the world. Interested members of the public gather to drink, meet local scientists and watch light-hearted presentations about their research. Originating in London in 2012, it has expanded to include 300 cities in more than 20 countries across the globe.
SuperNEMO at the Institute of Physics
SuperNEMO collaborators from UCL and the University of Manchester have spent the last three days in Bristol attending the Institute of Physics’ annual Astroparticle and High Energy Particle Physics conference.
Opening the SuperNEMO tracker
The SuperNEMO detector is one step closer to completion, as we ramp up our final construction efforts ready for data-taking later this year.
Autumn collaboration meeting in Orsay
The SuperNEMO collaboration’s Autumn meeting this year is hosted by the Laboratoire de l’Accelerateur Lineaire, on their beautiful campus at Orsay, on the outskirts of Paris, France.
Congratulations to Dr Aivaras Zukauskas
Big congratulations to Dr Aivaras Zukauskas, who defended his PhD thesis last week!
New paper on SuperNEMO's calorimeters
The SuperNEMO collaboration has published a paper describing the research and development programme and final design for SuperNEMO’s calorimeters.
Congratulations, Dr Thibaud Le Noblet
Congratulations to Dr Thibaud Le Noblet of LAPP in Annecy, France, who has just defended his PhD thesis “Background studies and design optimisation of the SuperNEMO demonstrator module; Search for $2\nu\beta\beta$ and $0\nu\beta\beta$ decays of $^{116}$Cd into the excited states of $^{116}$Sn with NEMO-3”. He was supervised by Dominique Duchesneau and Alberto Remoto.
Let's congratulate Dr Steven Calvez
Congratulations are in order for Dr Steven Calvez, has defended his PhD thesis, supervised by Xavier Garrido of the Laboratoire de l’Accelerateur Lineaire in Orsay, near Paris.
NEMO-3 Quadruple Beta Decay paper selected by PRL editors
Our paper on the “Search for Neutrinoless Quadruple-$\beta$ Decay of $^{150}$Nd with the NEMO-3 Detector”, led by Dr Pawel Guzowski of the University of Manchester, has been chosen as an Editor’s Selection by Physical Review Letters. This is the first search for a decay mode predicted by some theories, which would violate lepton number conservation by four units. No evidence of the decay was seen, enabling us to set a limit on the half life for the process.
SuperNEMO collaboration meets in Prague
The SuperNEMO collaboration summer collaboration meeting took place this year from June 26-28 in Prague, Czech Republic. Physicists travelled across Europe and the world to discuss our progress at this exciting phase of the experiment, when we are installing and commissioning the detector, and preparing analysis software and simulation ready for first data in the coming months.
New SuperNEMO paper on the BiPo-3 detector
The SuperNEMO collaboration has published a paper containing measurements from the BiPo-3 detector. Located in the Canfranc Underground Laboratory in Spain, BiPo-3 is a low-radioactivity detector dedicated to measuring ultra low natural radionuclide contaminations of $^{208}$Tl ($^{232}$Th chain) and $^{214}$Bi ($^{238}$U chain) in thin materials. In particular, it has looked at the thin foils of selenium-82 that will be used as a double-beta decay source in the SuperNEMO experiment. It is vital that we study these decays from natural environmental sources, which can mimic our double-beta decay signal. BiPo-3’s results will be key to understanding these background processes so that we can achieve our goal of being an ultra-low-background experiment.
SuperNEMO and NEMO-3 detectors presented at TIPP
UCL researcher Dr Michele Cascella gave a presentation on the NEMO-3 and SuperNEMO experiments at the TIPP’17 conference. TIPP’17, the International Conference on Technology and Instrumentation in Particle Physics, took place in Beijing, China from May 22-26, 2017.
Congratulations, Dr Xin Ran Liu
Congratulations to Dr Xin Ran Liu, who defended his PhD thesis today, supervised by Professor Ruben Saakyan of University College London. Xin studied the effect of radon on SuperNEMO, studying the radiopure components that will lead to the ultra-low-background detector that we will need to make precision measurements of double beta decays.
Congratulations to Dr John Cesar
Congratulations are in order for Dr John Cesar, who defended his PhD dissertation today. John was supervised by Professor Karol Lang of the University of Texas at Austin.
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