XIV International Conference on New Frontiers in Physics 2025

Jul 17, 2025, 8:45 AM → Jul 31, 2025, 3:00 PM Europe/Athens

Orthodox Academy of Crete, Kolymbari, Crete, Greece

 

The International Conference on New Frontiers in Physics aims to promote scientific exchange and the development of novel ideas in science, with a particular emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration. The conference will bring together experts from around the world, as well as promising young scientists working on experimental and theoretical aspects of particle, nuclear, heavy ion, and astroparticle physics and cosmology, along with colleagues from other disciplines, such as solid-state physics, mathematics, mathematical physics, quantum optics, and more.

The conference will be hosted at the Conference Center of the Orthodox Academy of Crete (OAC), which is situated in an exceptionally beautiful location just a few meters from the Mediterranean Sea.

Arrival day: Wednesday, 16 July 2025
Departure day: Friday, 1 August 2025

Bulletins

• Directions taxi and parking.pdf
• ExcursionsDescriptions_ICNFP2025.pdf
• ICNFP_2025_Bulletin.pdf
• PublicBus_Timetable_2025.pdf

Conference Poster

• ICNFP_25_Poster_A2_printer.pdf
• ICNFP_25_Poster_A3_printer.pdf
• ICNFP_25_Poster_A4_printer.pdf

Various particles_partnership.png

Thu, July 17

8:45 AM → 9:20 AM Registration

9:20 AM → 9:40 AM Opening session: Organizing Committee

Conveners: Larisa Bravina, Sonia Kabana (Instituto De Alta Investigación, Universidad de Tarapacá (CL))

9:20 AM Opening of the ICNFP Conference (Organizers of ICNFP 2025)

Speakers: Larisa Bravina, Sonia Kabana (Instituto De Alta Investigación, Universidad de Tarapacá (CL))

ICNFP-2025_Welcome.pdf

ICNFP-2025_Welcome.pptx

9:40 AM → 10:00 AM Opening session: Ioannis Mountogiannakis on behalf of OAC

9:40 AM OAC Welcome

Speaker: Ioannis Mountogiannakis

Παρουσίαση ΟΑΚ Γιάννης - Αντιγραφή.pptx

10:00 AM → 10:30 AM Workshop on Astro-Cosmo-Gravity

Conveners: Larisa Bravina, Sonia Kabana (Instituto De Alta Investigación, Universidad de Tarapacá (CL))

10:00 AM The Pierre Auger Observatory: Current Status and Expectations from the Upgrade

The Pierre Auger Observatory, with two decades of data, has significantly advanced our understanding of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) with energies exceeding 10^18 eV. Key results of the Observatory include: precise measurement of the cosmic-ray spectrum at the highest energies, observation of anisotropies in UHECR arrival directions, pointing to possible sources and mass composition of UHECRs. However, this progress has also revealed a complex astrophysical landscape and tensions with existing models of hadronic interactions. To further our knowledge, determining the primary composition of the cosmic rays is crucial. The so-called AugerPrime upgrade aims to achieve this by disentangling electromagnetic and muonic components of extensive air showers on an event-by-event basis. To this end, the surface array was improved by adding new scintillator and radio detectors to the existing water-Cherenkov stations and also underground muon counters were installed in a dense region of the array. As the commissioning of the final components of AugerPrime reaches its conclusion and the enhanced array comes fully online, we discuss expectations for its performance and the first results of this now multi-hybrid detector.

Speaker: Dariusz Gora (Institute of Nuclear Physics PAN)

Auger-slajd-ICNFP-2025.pdf

10:30 AM → 11:00 AM Coffee break

11:00 AM → 1:00 PM High Energy Particle Physics

Convener: Prof. Pietro Vischia (Universidad de Oviedo and Instituto de Ciencias y Tecnologías Espaciales de Asturias (ICTEA))

11:00 AM Cabbibo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix-related measurements at Belle II

The Belle and Belle II experiments have collected a 1.1 ab$^{-1}$ sample of $e^+ e^-\to B\bar{B}$ collisions at a centre-of-mass energy corresponding to the $\Upsilon(4S)$ resonance. These data allow measurements of $CP\!$ violation and the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix elements in $B$-meson decay. In particular, we measure the $CP$-violating phase $\phi_1/\alpha$ and $\left|V_{cb}\right|$. In addition, we present constraints on the branching fractions of $B^+\to\ell^+\nu~(\ell=\mu,~\tau)$, which are related to $\left|V_{ub}\right|$.

Speaker: Petros Stavroulakis

CKM measurements at Belle II - Stavroulakis.pdf

11:25 AM Recent Advances in Studies of Charged Charmonium-like States at BESIII

Charged (non-zero isospin) charmonium-like states hold a unique position
in hadron spectroscopy, as their charged nature precludes a pure ccbar quark
configuration, making them compelling candidates for exotic hadrons or tetraquark
structures. This talk highlights recent progress in the investigation of charged
charmonium-like states at BESIII, leveraging the experiment’s world-leading data
samples and advanced analysis techniques. Key topics include the application of
partial wave analysis to disentangle overlapping resonant contributions and the
incorporation of coupled-channel effects to account for interactions between
open-charm thresholds and exotic states. These novel methodologies have uncovered
new insights into the nature of these exotic systems, shedding light on their
production mechanisms and internal dynamics. Results from BESIII’s latest analyses
will be presented, with a focus on their implications for understanding
non-conventional QCD phenomena and the broader landscape of exotic hadrons.

Speaker: XUHONG LI

ICNFP_BESIII_Zc(s)_lixh.pdf

11:50 AM Performance of the ATLAS Tile Calorimeter in LHC Run 3

The Tile Calorimeter (TileCal) is a sampling hadronic calorimeter covering the central region of the ATLAS experiment, with steel as absorber and plastic scintillators as active medium. The scintillators are read-out by the wavelength shifting fibres coupled to the photomultiplier tubes (PMTs). The analogue signals from the PMTs are amplified, shaped, digitized by sampling the signal every 25 ns and stored on detector until a trigger decision is received. The TileCal front-end electronics reads out the signals produced by about 10000 channels measuring energies ranging from about 30 MeV to about 2 TeV. Each stage of the signal production from scintillation light to the signal reconstruction is monitored and calibrated. During LHC runs, high-momentum isolated muons have been used to study and validate the electromagnetic scale, while hadronic response has been probed with isolated hadrons. The calorimeter time resolution has been studied with multi-jet events. A summary of the performance results with the LHC Run-3 data, including the calibration, stability, absolute energy scale, uniformity and time resolution, will be shown.

Speaker: Rute Pedro (Laboratory of Instrumentation and Experimental Particle Physics (PT))

TilePerformance_v2.pdf

12:15 PM HCAL (CMS)

This talk reviews the recent status and activities of CMS HCAL, including detector operation, detector performance, and detector upgrade for HL-HLC. The detector performance will be a focus of this talk, including HCAL trigger, HCAL calibration, HCAL reconstruction, HCAL data quality monitoring, etc.

Speaker: Hui Wang (Nanjing Normal University (CN))

CMS HCAL ICNFP 2025.pdf

12:40 PM Studies of exclusive proton-proton reactions with CBM at FAIR

Understanding the structure and interactions of hadrons is
essential for unraveling the dynamics of the strong force. In
this context, a new hadron physics program using, e.g. the
Compressed Baryonic Matter (CBM) facility, proposes to study the
production, structure, and spectroscopy of multi-strange and
charm baryons produced in proton-proton collisions at FAIR. One
of the focuses is exploring the exotic hidden-charm states, such as
pentaquarks and tetraquarks, and investigating the proton structure. The
proton beams at energies of up to 29 GeV ($\sqrt{s}$~=~7.6 GeV) delivered
by the FAIR/SIS100 accelerator will allow for such studies over
a wide energy range. The high acceptance and high-rate capability
CBM experiment allows for complementary data for heavy-ion as
well as for hadron and nuclear physics. We present first
preliminary results of ongoing feasibility studies for
reconstructing exclusive final states with CBM.

Speaker: Dr Shreya Roy (GSI - Helmholtzzentrum fur Schwerionenforschung GmbH (DE))

SRoy_talk_ICNFP2025-exclusive_pp_v2.pdf

1:00 PM → 2:00 PM Lunch

2:00 PM → 4:30 PM Break

4:30 PM → 5:00 PM Coffee break

5:00 PM → 6:15 PM Heavy Ion Collisions and Critical Phenomena

Convener: Prof. Ivan Kisel (Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe Univ. (DE))

5:00 PM PHENIX heavy ion overview

The PHENIX experiment ceased data taking in 2016, but the collaboration continues to produce impactful results by leveraging its rich dataset and advancing analysis techniques. In this talk, I will present recent PHENIX heavy ion results that offer insight into the time evolution of ion collisions and the mechanisms of hadronization at RHIC energies. These include measurements with clean electromagnetic probes as photons and leptons to constrain space-time dynamics and heavy flavor production, as well as studies of hadron production, collective flow, and Bose-Einstein correlations to explore the bulk medium's properties, energy loss, and hadron formation. I will also summarize the status of persistent puzzles involving baryons, direct photons, and flow-like signals, highlighting PHENIX’s enduring role in addressing some of the field’s challenging questions.

Speaker: Dr Iurii Mitrankov (Stony Brook University)

ICNFP_2025_IuriiMitrankov.pdf

5:25 PM STAR experiment “non-spin” results highlight

STAR experiment “non-spin” results highlight

Speaker: Jakub Ceska

Ceska_ICNFP25_final.pdf

5:50 PM A review of recent open heavy-flavour results from the ALICE experiment

In this talk, we present a comprehensive summary of recent heavy-flavor results from the ALICE experiment, based on the high-statistics data collected during LHC Run 3. Heavy quarks (charm and beauty), produced in the early stages of high-energy collisions, serve as powerful probes of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) across different collision systems. In proton--proton (pp) collisions, they offer a means to validate perturbative QCD and investigate hadronization processes. In heavy-ion collisions, they probe the quark–gluon plasma (QGP) through their interactions with the medium.

With major detector upgrades the ALICE experiment achieved significantly improved precision, vertexing, and statistical reach in Run 3 enabling detailed exploration of heavy-flavor production across a broad kinematic range. We highlight key results from pp collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 13.6$ TeV, including baryon-to-meson production ratios, angular correlations, and the reconstruction of excited and rare charm and beauty hadrons.
In Pb--Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}} = 5.36$ TeV, new measurements of charm-hadron elliptic flow ($v_2$), including the first $\Lambda_{c}^{+}$ $v_2$, provide valuable constraints on the degree of charm-quark thermalization and the interplay between partonic collectivity and hadronization.

Collectively, Run 3 has significantly advanced heavy-flavor studies in ALICE, delivering precise constraints on theoretical frameworks and enhancing our understanding of QCD in both small and large systems.

Speaker: Samrangy Sadhu (University of Bonn (DE))

ICNFP2025 _samrangy.pdf

7:00 PM → 7:55 PM History of OAC and Meaning of Blessing by Zoe Tsiami & Opening Session by the OAC Director

The talk - Room 1
OAC terrace near the New building - Blessing

8:00 PM → 9:00 PM Dinner

Fri, July 18

9:00 AM → 10:00 AM High Energy Particle Physics

Convener: Prof. Greg Landsberg (Brown University (US))

9:00 AM Machine Learning Optimized Design of Experiments at the frontiers of computation: methods and new perspectives

Designing the next generation colliders and detectors involves solving optimization problems in high-dimensional spaces where the optimal solutions may nest in regions that even a team of expert humans would not explore. Furthermore, the large amount of data we need to generate to study physics for the next runs of large HEP machines and that we will need for future colliders is staggering, requiring rethinking of our simulation and reconstruction paradigm. Differentiable programming enables the incorporation of domain knowledge, encoded in simulation software, into gradient or reinforcement learning based pipelines, resulting in the capability of optimizing a given simulation setting and performing inference through classically intractable settings.

In this talk I will describe the first proof-of-concept results for the gradient-based optimization of experimental design, with a focus on large-scale simulation software, and will briefly touch on recent advances in calorimetry with neuromorphic hardware architectures, paving the way to more complex challenges, as well as on the MODE Collaboration and the EUCAIF project.

Speaker: Prof. Pietro Vischia (Universidad de Oviedo and Instituto de Ciencias y Tecnologías Espaciales de Asturias (ICTEA))

2025-07-18_DifferentiableProgrammingAtFrontiersComputationAtICNFP2025_vischia.pdf

9:30 AM On Final Results From the Muon $g\textrm{-}2$ Experiment at Fermilab

The Muon $g\textrm{-}2$ Experiment at Fermilab has measured the muon anomalous magnetic moment, $a_\mu$, with unprecedented precision, leveraging a dataset from Runs $1$–$6$ that is $21$ times larger than its Brookhaven predecessor. This talk will present the experiment’s final result, which serves as a benchmark for testing the Standard Model with high precision. The measurement was performed in a storage ring with a highly uniform magnetic field, where precise beam dynamics understanding is vital to determine the muon anomalous precession frequency. Key to this effort were advanced simulation tools including COSY INFINITY, precise fringe field modeling, and calculations of beam dynamics characteristics like tunes and chromaticity. We will conclude by exploring how the experiment's findings reshape our understanding of particle physics.

Speaker: Eremey Vladimirovich Valetov

Valetov_EV_18Jul2025_Talk.pptm

10:00 AM → 10:30 AM Workshop on QCD

Convener: Prof. Greg Landsberg (Brown University (US))

10:00 AM Genuine Description of Hadron Resonances

In most theoretical approaches to hadron resonances these states have been described as excited bound states rather than as genuine resonances taking into account their decay channels explicitly. As a result essential properties, such as the decay widths, have not been predicted strictly from quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Most of the existing results must therefore be considered as stemming from effective descriptions. The particular properties of QCD, especially the confinement, hinder a proper description of hadron resonances above all, if a relativistic treatment is required.
We shall advocate a fully Poincaré-invariant description of hadron resonances by a relativistic multi-channel constituent-quark model. Thereby it will be possible to include decay channels up to a certain threshold explicitly and thus to represent the excitations as genuine resonances. First results for decay widths and vertex form factors will be presented for $\Delta$ baryons within a coupled $\pi$-$N$-$\Delta$ system.

Speaker: Prof. Willibald Plessas (Institute of Physics, University of Graz)

Plessas@ICNFP2025.pdf

10:30 AM → 11:00 AM Coffee break

11:00 AM → 11:25 AM Special Session on neutrino physics

Convener: Dr Eremey Vladimirovich Valetov

11:00 AM Effect of neutrino speed and mass on the gravitational confinement of relativistic neutrinos

A rotating neutrino model combining special relativity, the de Broglie wavelength equation and Newton’s gravitational law with gravitational masses, has shown recently that the structure comprising three relativistic neutrinos of the heaviest neutrino rest mass, rotating on a circular orbit due to their gravitational attraction, has the mass of a neutron. This rotating lepton model (RLM), has no adjustable parameters. Here we examine how the fast motion of the rotating neutrinos leads to a dramatic relativistic increase in their mass and a concomitant interparticle gravitational attraction which reaches the value of the Strong Force. We also summarize the RLM computed masses of fifteen hadrons and three bosons and we find the same very good agreement with the experimental results. The analysis shows that the very small rest masses of neutrinos and their concomitant facile acceleration to ultrarelativistic velocities, makes them excellent building components for hadron formation.

“Catalysis in Chemistry and Physics: The Roles of Leptons, Special Relativity and Quantum Mechanics”, C.G. Vayenas, D.G. Tsousis, E.H. Martino, Springer Nature, Switzerland AG, (2024). ISBN978-3-031-68121-9

Speaker: Prof. Constantinos Vayenas (University of Patras)

ICNFP 2025 Crete presentation CGVayenas.pptx

11:25 AM → 1:05 PM High Energy Particle Physics

Convener: Dr Eremey Vladimirovich Valetov

11:25 AM B Physics Results from CMS

In this talk, I'll review recent B Physics results from the CMS experiment, including determination of B meson production fractions, studies of tetraquark canddiates, measurements of several radiative decays, and searches for new physics in b hadron decays.

Speaker: Greg Landsberg (Brown University (US))

Kolymbari.pdf

11:50 AM Top-quark production cross sections at higher perturbative orders

I present calculations of higher-order corrections to top-quark production via three different processes: the production of a top-antitop pair and a $Z$ boson; single-top quark production in the $s$-channel; and top-antitop production with a Higgs boson. It is shown that the contributions from soft-gluon corrections are numerically dominant and large in all these processes. I present approximate NNLO (aNNLO) and approximate N$^3$LO (aN$^3$LO) cross sections that include soft-gluon corrections added to the exact NLO QCD results. Electroweak corrections through NLO are also included for $t{\bar t}Z$ and $t{\bar t}H$ production. The theoretical predictions are compared to LHC measurements of total cross sections for these processes.

Speaker: Prof. Nikolaos Kidonakis

Kidonakis_ICNFP2025.pdf

12:15 PM Searches for Exotica (CMS)

Although the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics provides a remarkably accurate description of known elementary particles and their interactions, it leaves several fundamental questions unanswered. This motivates an extensive program of searches for physics beyond the SM at high-energy colliders. This talk presents CMS searches for new phenomena in final states containing gluons, light and heavy-flavor jets, leptons, and heavy bosons, with a focus on recent results based on the full Run II and Run III (2022 + 2023) datasets collected at the LHC.

Speaker: Maria Kotsarini (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (GR))

ICNFP_2025_searches_for_Exotica.pdf

12:40 PM First-forbidden non-unique beta decay of $^{113m}$Cd

The first-forbidden non-unique $\beta$ decay of $^{113\text{m}}$Cd was studied at LNGS using a $^{106}$CdWO$_4$ crystal scintillator enriched in $^{106}$Cd and contaminated with $^{113m}$Cd at a level of $\sim$ (14–28) Bq. The half-life T$_{1/2}$ of $^{113\text{m}}$Cd was determined through low-background $\beta$ spectral analysis of data collected in 2009, 2015, and 2023, resulting in T$_{1/2} =$ 13.58(32) years. For the first time, the $\beta$ spectral shape of $^{113\text{m}}$Cd was studied experimentally and compared with theoretical shell model calculations, including atomic shell effects. In addition, ultra-low-background $\gamma$ spectrometry with HPGe detectors allowed us to refine the isomeric decay branching ratio and the $\gamma$-ray energy of the transition to the ground state of $^{113}$Cd to 0.0792(21)\% and 263.36(4) keV, respectively. Finally, a lower limit on the $\beta$ decay of $^{113m}$Cd to the 391.699 keV metastable state of $^{113}$In was established for the first time: T$_{1/2} \geq 8.6 \times 10^6$ years at 90\% C.L.

Speaker: Prof. Vincenzo Caracciolo (Physics Department, University of Roma Tor Vergata and INFN, I-00133 Rome, Italy)

CARACCIOLO_ICNFP2025.pdf

1:05 PM → 2:05 PM Lunch

2:05 PM → 4:30 PM Break

4:30 PM → 5:00 PM Coffee break

5:00 PM → 6:40 PM High Energy Particle Physics

Convener: Dr Shreya Roy (GSI - Helmholtzzentrum fur Schwerionenforschung GmbH (DE))

5:00 PM Photoproduction of quarkonia-photon pairs in the Color Glass Condensate framework

In this talk, we present our results on the exclusive photoproduction of quarkonia-photon pairs in the Color Glass Condensate framework. We focus on the $C$-parity odd $\eta_c \gamma$ and $\chi_c \gamma$ pairs, which have the largest cross-section in high-energy kinematics. In the leading order in the strong coupling $\alpha_s$, the cross sections of these processes is controlled by the nonperturbative forward dipole scattering amplitude. Using the available phenomenological parametrizations of this object, we estimated numerically the production cross section and counting rates in the kinematics of the ongoing and forthcoming experiments at LHC and the high-energy runs of the future Electron Ion Collider. We found that the production cross sections of $\eta_c \gamma$ and $\chi_c \gamma$ pairs are sufficiently large for experimental study. We also estimated the role of these processes as potential backgrounds to exclusive $\eta_c$ and $\chi_c$ photoproduction, which are conventionally considered as gateways for studies of odderons. We found that the contribution of the suggested mechanism (with undetected photon) is on par with expected contribution of the odderon-mediated production in the kinematics of small momentum transfer $|t|\le 1 {\rm GeV}^2$, though falls off rapidly at larger $|t|$.

This talk is partially based on materials of our recent publication Phys. Rev. D 111 (2025) 5, 056024 .

Speaker: Marat Siddikov

Talk_ICNFP_2025v1.pdf

5:25 PM Kaon-nucleon strong interaction in exotic atoms

SIDDHARTA-2 concludes a 30-year quest on measuring the k-p and k-n strong interaction at threshold, manifested in light exotic atoms as a relevant shift and a widening of the fundamental level. The collaboration successfully carried out the first measurement ever of the kaonic deuterium transitions, which, combined with the SIDDHARTA results on kaonic hydrogen in 2009, allows extracting the isospin-dependent kaon-nucleon scattering lengths, quantities fundamental to understanding the low-energy QCD in the strangeness sector and in particular the chiral symmetry breaking mechanism. A series of innovative techniques developed during the decades by the collaboration will be presented, together with the most recent results and future plans to employ the methods for other fundamental investigations, like the determination of the still uncertain charged kaon mass and measuring the transitions of other light and medium-weight kaonic atoms, with impact on various physics topics, from astrophysics to quantum field theory.

Speaker: Dr Mihail Antoniu Iliescu (INFN, Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati (IT))

k-N_Kolymvary_2025.pdf

5:50 PM Advancing Noble Liquid Calorimetry: The ALLEGRO ECAL Concept for FCC-ee

The electron-positron phase of the Future Circular Collider (FCC-ee) is poised to deliver high-precision measurements in the electroweak sector and possibly explore physics beyond the Standard Model. Achieving these goals requires innovative detector technologies with exceptional resolution and granularity. The ALLEGRO detector concept is being developed to address these demands, with a particular focus on its noble liquid-based electromagnetic calorimeter (ECAL).

As part of the Detector R&D Collaboration for Calorimeters (DRD6), the ALLEGRO ECAL employs a design featuring straight multilayer readout electrodes. This configuration enables fine segmentation, a key requirement for the application of modern reconstruction techniques such as particle flow and machine learning-driven algorithms. Recent tests of the readout electrode prototypes, including comparisons with simulation, will be highlighted.

In parallel, extensive R&D is underway to optimize the mechanical design of the calorimeter, covering elements such as absorber plates, support mechanics, and precision spacers. The current status and next steps toward a prototype suitable for beam tests will be discussed. Integration efforts within the key4hep software are also progressing, enabling full simulation and reconstruction workflows for the ALLEGRO concept. Preliminary performance expectations from this framework will be presented.

Speaker: Martina Maria Koppitz (Technische Universitaet Dresden (DE))

ALLEGRO_ICNFP_2025.pdf

6:15 PM Probing Lorentz Invariance Violation in Z Boson Mass Measurements at High-Energy Colliders

A minimal extension to the Standard Model that introduces a Lorentz Invariance Violation into the Z boson's dispersion relation, expressed as $ p_\mu p^\mu = M_Z^2 + \delta_{\text{LIV}} (p_\mu n^\mu)^2 $, where $\delta_{\text{LIV}}$ defines the violation scale and $n^\mu$ is a unit Lorentz vector specifying the direction, alters the Z boson propagator and decay rate, affecting the Drell–Yan process cross-section at high-energy colliders. Observable effects are most pronounced near the resonance region at high rapidities ($|Y| > 4$), potentially shifting the perceived Z boson mass and inducing sidereal-time modulations for spacelike and lightlike LIV due to Earth's rotation. We outline a targeted search strategy for ATLAS and CMS, achieving sensitivity to LIV signatures down to $|\delta_{\text{LIV}}| \approx 10^{-8}$ (or $10^{-9}$ optimistically), offering new insights into historical and future collider data. Our model predicts systematic shifts in weak boson masses at higher collision energies—relevant to past Tevatron and LHC discrepancies—though current data appear consistent.

Speaker: Dr Zurab Kepuladze (Ilia state university & Andronikashvili Insitute of Physics)

presentation for ICNFP-Crete-Zurab Kepuladze.pdf

5:00 PM → 7:20 PM Special Session on neutrino physics

Convener: Prof. Constantinos Vayenas (University of Patras)

5:00 PM LEGEND experiment: status and prospects of the neutrinoless double-beta decay search

The Large Enriched Germanium Experiment for Neutrinoless ββ Decay (LEGEND) is a next-generation project aimed at the discovery of neutrinoless double-beta decay (0νββ) in Ge-76. By employing isotopically enriched high-purity germanium (HPGe) detectors, LEGEND seeks to achieve an unprecedented discovery sensitivity, targeting half-lives beyond 10²⁸ years in the second phase. The observation of this lepton-number-violating process would provide direct evidence that neutrinos are Majorana particles and indicate the existence of new physics beyond the Standard Model. LEGEND builds upon the technological advancements achieved by the GERDA and MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR experiments, including ultra-low background techniques and high-performance HPGe detector systems. The first phase of the experiment, LEGEND-200, has collected physics data at LNGS (Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Italy) over one year of operation with 140 kg of HPGe detectors. The first analysis of unblinded data has been instrumental in assessing the sensitivity of LEGEND-200 and in refining the characterization of its background.
In this talk, we will present an overview of the LEGEND experiment, including its experimental strategy, background mitigation techniques, and the latest results from LEGEND-200. Additionally, we will review the progress and future prospects for the next phase of the experiment, LEGEND-1000.
This work is supported by the U.S. DOE and the NSF, the LANL, ORNL and LBNL LDRD programs; the European ERC and Horizon programs; the German DFG, BMBF, and MPG; the Italian INFN; the Polish NCN and MNiSW; the Czech MEYS; the Slovak RDA; the Swiss SNF; the UK STFC; the Canadian NSERC and CFI; the LNGS and SURF facilities.

Speaker: Nadezda Rumyantseva

Rumyantseva_INCFP_2025.pdf

5:25 PM Current Status of the SuperNEMO Neutrino Experiment

The SuperNEMO experiment is designed to search for neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ). The detector has a segmented tracker-calorimeter structure offering the unique ability to recover the topology of potential 0νββ and 2νββ decays as well as the individual energies of electrons from the decay. After years of design, construction and commissioning we began taking Physics data in April 2025! Due to the unique event topology reconstruction abilities of SuperNEMO we can search for many corrections to 2νββ (including BSM contributions) as well as many 0νββ mechanisms. I will present the technical and physics goals of SuperNEMO and show how, even within a year of data taking, we will be sensitive to possible new physics effects from BSM processes.

The neutron flux that originates from the underground lab, LSM, can cause interactions in the SuperNEMO detector that can be a significant background to 0νββ searches. To understand our sensitivity to 0νββ and 2νββ studies this external background must be understood.

Simulation work has been performed to model this background in the current detector setup. Specifically, the effect of neutrons capturing on materials in the detector, shielding and lab have been modelled in geant4.

I will demonstrate the importance of this background to our various physics searches and will present the results of simulation studies that have informed how we shield SuperNEMO from neutrons.

Speaker: Mr Sam Pratt (University of Edinburgh)

crete_talk_pdf3.pdf

5:50 PM Recent results from the SND@LHC experiment

SND@LHC is a compact and stand-alone experiment to perform measurements with neutrinos produced at the LHC in a hitherto unexplored pseudo-rapidity region of 7.2 < 𝜂 < 8.6, complementary to all the other experiments at the LHC. The experiment is located 480 m downstream of IP1 in the unused TI18 tunnel. The detector is composed of a hybrid system based on an 800 kg target mass of tungsten plates, interleaved with emulsion and electronic trackers, followed downstream by a calorimeter and a muon system. The configuration allows efficiently distinguishing between all three neutrino flavours, opening a unique opportunity to probe physics of heavy flavour production at the LHC in the region that is not accessible to ATLAS, CMS and LHCb. This region is of particular interest also for future circular colliders and for predictions of very high-energy atmospheric neutrinos. The detector concept is also well suited to searching for Feebly Interacting Particles via signatures of scattering in the detector target. The first phase aims at operating the detector throughout LHC Run 3 to collect a total of 290 fb−1. The experiment has been running successfully since 2022 and has published several results. This talk will focus on the experience gained from the first measurements and how this is being used to achieve the physics goals of SND@LHC.

Speaker: Mr Vasileios Chariton (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (GR))

ICNFP_2025_VasilisChariton.pptx

6:15 PM A simple model for analytically computing the three neutrino rest masses

Speaker: Dionysios Tsousis (University of Patras)

ICNFP 2025 DGTsousis.pdf

6:40 PM PROTODUNE-HD Photon Detection System

The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) aims to provide a broad physics program primarily focused on probing CP violation in the neutrino sector and determining the neutrino mass ordering. The experiment will consist of four far detectors, having a baseline technology of Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers (LArTPCs) with 17 kton of liquid argon each. To successfully implement this detector, a prototype of one of the far detectors, the FD-HD, has been built at CERN to validate and commission the choices made for the final detector. The detector is the ProtoDUNE-HD, a LArTPC with 0.28 kton of liquid argon, featuring a horizontally applied electric field of 0.5 kV/cm and two drift regions. When a charged particle crosses the detector, it creates ionization electrons and scintillation photons at 128 nm. To read the charge signal, three wire planes (two induction and one collection) were implemented in the detector. Meanwhile, to read the photon signal, the X-ARAPUCA technology is used, which shifts the scintillation light to the visible region so it can be detected by Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs). The light signal plays a crucial role not only in improving energy resolution, but also in providing a trigger for non-beam events. In this presentation, the current status of the ProtoDUNE-HD photon detection system will be presented, including the status of the light yield, time resolution, and effects of varying the electric field strengths and other ongoing analyses.

Speaker: Gabriel Botogoske (INFN)

protodune-hd-pds-icnfp-4.pdf

7:00 PM Using Stopping Cosmic Muons for Calibrations at DUNE

The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is an upcoming international experiment that is expected to start taking data in the late 2020s. Consequently, a significant portion of the current work revolves around modelling, prototyping, and other forms of preparation, much of it using Monte-Carlo simulation before a full-scale dataset has been produced. One of the key contributions to this is detector calibration. Detector calibration provides analysts with the tools to map between detector observables and their corresponding physical qualities, which is necessary to produce accurate results. This talk will demonstrate methods of calibrating the energy deposited by stopping cosmic muons, by examining their charge depositions in a 10kt fiducial mass DUNE Far Detector module which makes use of LArTPC technology.

Speaker: Alexandra Frances Moor (University of Sheffield (GB))

Calibration with Stopping Particles ICNFP Talk.pdf

5:00 PM → 6:50 PM Workshop on QCD

Convener: Prof. Willibald Plessas (Institute of Physics, University of Graz)

5:00 PM Partons in QED

Properties and applications of QED parton distribution and fragmentation functions are discussed. Optimization of the factorization scale choice is demonstrated for specific processes. A new factorization scheme is proposed for Drell-Yan processes in QED. Features of QED and QCD parton distribution functions are compared.

Speaker: Andrej Arbuzov (Joint Institute for Nuclear Research)

arbuzov_partons_QED.pdf

5:30 PM $\Upsilon$ - like distribution of the electric field in the SU(3) Yang-Mills-Proca theory with three quarks

Within Yang-Mills-Proca theory with external sources, finite-energy regular solutions have been obtained. It is shown that color electric/magnetic fields have two components: the first one is a gradient/curl component, respectively, and the second one is a nonlinear component. It is shown that the color electric field has $\Upsilon-$like spatial distribution. In this case, the $\Upsilon-$like behavior appears due to the gradient component of the electric field. The nonlinear component of the electric field is rotational one, and it arises because of the vector potential sourced by the solenoidal current. The color magnetic field is purely curl one, since its nonzero color components have no nonlinear component; this results in the fact that its force lines are located on the surface of a torus. It is shown that the results obtained are in good agreement with the results obtained in lattice calculations in quantum chromodynamics. To discuss such agreement, we consider a procedure of nonperturbative quantization and discuss possible approximations leading to such agreement. We also compare the energy profiles obtained by us with those obtained using lattice calculations with a static potential.

Speaker: Prof. Vladimir Dzhunushaliev

6:00 PM Σc baryon spectroscopy in the relativistic framework of an independent quark model

The heavy baryon spectroscopy is crucial for gaining deeper insights into the strong interaction in the Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). It has attracted considerable experimental and theoretical attentions. So far, a large number of singly heavy baryons have been observed in experiment, which provides the important support for related theoretical researches. The mass spectroscopy of Σc will be performed within the relativistic framework of independent quark model. Individual quarks are governed by a Dirac equation in the center of mass frame. A Martin-like potential of equal mix of scalar and vector components is used to investigate the quark confinement within the baryon. With the suitable potential parameters for Σc, mass spectra for high radial excitation will be calculated. Magnetic moment and radiative decay are also predicted.

Speaker: Bayan Alshihri

ICNFP2025-B.Alshihri.pdf

6:25 PM Center vortices and the topological charge of the vacuum

We consider a vacuum wavefunctional for SU(N) Yang-Mills theory peaked at thick center vortices. The vacuum average of the 't Hooft within this wavefunctional yields a perimeter law, while that of the Wilson loop yields an area law,, consistent with both criterions for confinement. In this work, we evaluate the topological susceptibility of the vacuum in this framework, and use the results to fix the parameters of the model.

Speaker: David Rosa Junior (University of Tübingen)

David_ICNFP_2025.pdf

6:40 PM → 7:50 PM Heavy Ion Collisions and Critical Phenomena

Convener: Dr Shreya Roy (GSI - Helmholtzzentrum fur Schwerionenforschung GmbH (DE))

6:40 PM Exploring charm-quark hadronization via charm-tagged jet and correlation measurements using machine learning with ALICE

Fragmentation functions are fundamental components of the factorization approach which is used to calculate the production cross sections of heavy-flavor hadrons within QCD. Due to their non-perturbative nature, they cannot be computed a priori and are typically extracted from measurements in clean environments such as electron-positron ($\rm e^+e^-$) or electron-proton ($\rm e^-p$) collisions. However, recent measurements of the relative abundances of various charmed hadrons in proton-proton (pp) collisions have questioned the universality of charm fragmentation across leptonic and hadronic collision systems.

In this contribution, we present measurements that consider not only heavy-flavor hadrons but also the surrounding charged particles, as angular correlations between charm hadrons and charged particles, and charm-tagged jets.

These observables enable a closer connection to charm fragmentation functions and provide stronger constraints on the hadronization process in hadronic collisions. A Boosted Decision Tree (BDT) classifier is employed to reconstruct charm hadrons in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 13.6$ TeV using data recorded by the ALICE during the Run 3 of the LHC. The FAIR Spoke 6 Project, funded by the NextGenerationEU program in Italy, supports these studies as a valuable use-case to find efficient computing solutions for AI-oriented applications. We report measurements of the fraction of jet longitudinal momentum carried by $\rm D^0$ and $\rm \Lambda_c^+$ baryons. Additionally, we present azimuthal correlation distributions of $\rm D_s^+$, $\rm D^+$, $\rm D^0$ mesons, and $\rm \Lambda_c^+$ baryons with charged particles. Further insight into the correlation patterns is obtained through the extraction of quantitative observables such as the near- and away-side peak integrals and widths. The results are compared to state-of-the-art theoretical predictions to improve our understanding of charm-quark fragmentation and hadronization in hadronic environments. Finally, an outlook on the status of the analysis of $\rm D_s^+$-meson and charged particles correlation in central and semicentral Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}} = 5.36$ TeV will be presented.

Speaker: Dr Shyam Kumar (Universita e INFN, Bari (IT))

ICNFP2025_ShyamKumar_CharmQuarkHadronization.pdf

7:05 PM Transport model insights to elliptic flow of charged hadrons in d+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} =$ 200 GeV

The elliptic flow describes the collective motion of particles produced in heavy-ion collisions, particularly in non-central collisions. This flow arises from the hydrodynamic effect caused by the pressure gradients within the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) medium formed during the collisions. d+Au collisions are particularly important for understanding nuclear effects and the impact of cold nuclear matter on particle production and collective flow. The study of elliptic flow in d+Au collisions challenges traditional perspectives associated with large systems (Au+Au). By examining elliptic flow, we can gain insights on collective behaviour arises in smaller collision systems. This helps us to differentiate between phenomena related to the hadronic medium and those resulting from the QGP.

In this talk, we will present elliptic flow ($v_{2}$) in d+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} =$ 200 GeV using using a multi-phase transport model (AMPT) model. We will discuss centrality and transverse momentum ($p_{T}$) dependence of $v_{2}$ in d+Au collisions. The results will be compared with the available experimental results from relativistic heavy-ion collider (RHIC).

Speaker: Dr Vipul Bairathi (Instituto de Alta Investigación, Universidad de Tarapacá)

dAu200GeVFlow_Ampt_ICNFP2025_V1.pdf

7:25 PM Recent highlights from the STAR Experiment

Understanding the QCD phase structure and the possible existence of a critical point remains one of the central goals of the heavy-ion program at RHIC. In this talk, we will present recent STAR results across multiple observables that probe different aspects of the hot and dense matter created in Au+Au collisions.
These include two-particle transverse momentum correlations and event-by-event fluctuations of $ $, net-proton cumulants up to fourth order, identical pion femtoscopy, and baryon-strangeness correlations. We will also discuss femtoscopic measurements of baryon-baryon pairs which offer insight into hyperon-nucleon and hyperon-hyperon interactions and the possible formation of strange dibaryon states. Together, these results provide complementary probes of the system’s evolution across a wide energy range ($\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 3–200 GeV), offering new constraints on the QCD equation of state and the location of the critical point.

Speaker: Mr Rutik Manikandhan (University of Houston)

ICNFP 2025_ver3.pdf

8:00 PM → 9:00 PM Dinner

Sat, July 19

10:00 AM → 7:00 PM FREE DAY

Sun, July 20

10:00 AM → 7:00 PM Excursion to the Monastery

Mon, July 21

9:00 AM → 9:30 AM Special Session on neutrino physics

Convener: Prof. Elena Arbuzova (Dubna State University and Novosibirsk State University)

9:00 AM Probing Neutrino Mass: Latest Results from the KATRIN Experiment

The KArlsruhe TRItium Neutrino (KATRIN) experiment aims to measure the effective mass of the electron antineutrino with a sensitivity of at least 0.3 eV/c² (90% C.L.) by analyzing the endpoint region of the kinematic tritium β-decay spectrum. Using a high-luminosity gaseous molecular tritium source with a high-resolution electrostatic spectrometer with magnetic adiabatic collimation, a new upper limit of 0.45 eV/c² (90% C.L.) on the neutrino mass could recently be set by KATRIN, using the first 25% of the total expected dataset. This talk gives an overview of the latest KATRIN results on neutrino mass and the search for sterile neutrinos, and concludes with an outlook on future prospects of KATRIN.

Speaker: Sonja Schneidewind (University of Münster)

9:30 AM → 10:30 AM Workshop on Dark matter from micro to macro

Convener: Prof. Elena Arbuzova (Dubna State University and Novosibirsk State University)

9:30 AM The conventional model of supermassive black hole in the Galactic Center and possible alternatives for such a model

In 2005 we predicted that based on VLBI observations it would be possible reconstruct a small dark spot (shadow) at the Galactic Center. Using current available estimates for distance and mass of the black hole we evaluated the shadow diameter as 50 μas.
Later, the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration observations and its data analysis have confirmed our predictions. Really, in 2019 the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) team presented the first image reconstruction around the shadow for the supermassive black hole in M87. In 2021 the EHT Collaboration constrained parameters (“charges”) of spherical symmetrical metrics of black holes from an allowed interval for shadow radius. Earlier, we obtained analytical expressions for the shadow radius as a function of charge (including a tidal one) in the case of Reissner–Nordström metric. Based on results of the shadow size evaluation for M87 done by the EHT collaboration we constrained a tidal charge. Similarly we constrained a tidal charge for the black hole at the Galactic Center based on shadow reconstruction done by EHT in 2022. We discuss opportunities to use shadows to test alternative theories of gravity and alternative models for galactic centers. We use also observational data for trajectories of bright stars near the Galactic Center to test gravity theories and theoretical models for the Galactic Center. In particular we found graviton mass bounds.

Speaker: Alexander Zakharov (Joint Institute for Nuclear Research)

10:00 AM Formation of dark matter primordial black holes

Primordial black holes (PBHs) are a promising candidate for the dark matter in the universe. We present mechanisms that produce large density fluctuations that lead to the formation of dark matter PBHs. As PBH formation models, we consider multi-field inflation, the axion-like curvaton model, and the non-topological soliton model.

Speaker: Masahiro Kawasaki

10:30 AM → 11:00 AM Coffee break

11:00 AM → 1:05 PM High Energy Particle Physics

Convener: Prof. Kun Liu (Tsung-Dao Lee Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University)

11:00 AM ePIC Detector and Collaboration

Understanding the properties of nuclear matter and its emergence through the underlying partonic structure and dynamics of quarks and gluons requires a new experimental facility in hadronic physics known as the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. This US-based facility, capable of colliding high-energy polarized electrons and polarized proton/ion beams at high luminosity, has been envisaged for a long time and articulated as the highest priority for new construction following the completion of the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) at Michigan State University. The EIC will address some of the most profound questions concerning the emergence of nuclear properties by precisely imaging gluons and quarks inside protons
and nuclei, such as the distribution of gluons and quarks in space and momentum, their role in building the nucleon mass, spin, and the properties of gluons in nuclei at high energies. A new detector collaboration has been formed around one of the two possible EIC interaction regions, known as the ePIC (electron-Proton/Ion Collider) collaboration.

This presentation will highlight the physics case, outline the requirements for the ePIC detector, discuss its design philosophy, and review the overall status and plans.

Speaker: Prof. Bernd Surrow (Temple University)

11:25 AM ATLAS Muon Detectors upgrades for High Luminosity LHC

The muon spectrometer of the ATLAS detector will undergo a substantial upgrade during the Phase-II upgrade in Long Shutdown 3 to meet the operational demands of the High-Luminosity LHC. Most of the electronics for the Monitored Drift Tube (MDT) chambers, Resistive Plate Chambers (RPC), and Thin Gap Chambers (TGC) will be replaced to ensure compatibility with the higher trigger rates and extended latencies required for the new level-0 trigger.
The MDT chambers will be integrated into the level-0 trigger to sharpen the momentum threshold. Additional RPC chambers will be installed in the inner barrel layer to enhance the acceptance and robustness of the trigger. Some MDT chambers in the inner barrel layer will be replaced with new small-diameter MDTs to optimize performance.

New TGC triplet chambers will be installed in the barrel-endcap transition region, replacing the current TGC doublets to reduce the high trigger rate caused by random coincidences in this area. Additionally, the power systems for the RPC, TGC, and MDT chambers, along with their associated electronics, will be replaced due to component obsolescence, ageing, and radiation damage.
This contribution will provide an overview of the upgrade challenges, the current status of the projects, prototype and production results.

Speaker: Marco Sessa (University Federico II and INFN, Naples (IT))

11:50 AM Search for the X17 particle with the PADME experiment

The PADME experiment at the Frascati National Laboratory of INFN has performed a
search for the hypothetical X17 particle, by observing the product of the collisions
of the positron beam from the DAΦNE LINAC on a diamond fixed target.
The beam energy has been varied in the range
265–300 MeV, corresponding to values of √s between 16.4 and 17.5 MeV,
completely covering the the CoM region identified by the
ATOMKI collaboration as significant for observing the postulated X17 particle.
The result of the analysis shows an about 2-sigma excess corresponding to the mass indicated by
the ATOMKI experiment. A new data taking campaign, with an improved detector is
planned to start in the summer of 2025, with the aim of pushing forward the
sensitivity of the search.

Speaker: Marco Mancini

12:10 PM Hybrid Baryons and N* Studies with CLAS12

An experimental program has been approved at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility to search for new excited baryon states in the mass range from 1.8 to 3 GeV and to study the spectrum and structure of excited nucleon states. New data from CLAS12 on πN, ππN, and KY electroproduction have been obtained using electron beams with energies of 6.5 and 7.5 impinging upon a liquid hydrogen target. Scattered electrons have been detected in a polar angle range of 2.5° to 4.5° by the Forward Tagger (FT) and at angles greater than 6° in the CLAS12 Forward Detector, allowing to measure the KY electro-production differential cross section and to probe the Q2 evolution of the nucleon resonances electro-couplings in the Q2 range from 0.05 GeV2 to 3 GeV2. The Q2 dependence of excited baryons electro-couplings allows to probe the dressed quark mass over the full range of distances where the dominant part of hadron mass emerges from QCD. By studying the Q2 evolution of electroexcitation amplitudes it will be also possible to distinguish between regular N states and possible additional hybrid baryon states in the mass range of 2.0 GeV < W < 2.5 GeV where the lightest hybrid baryons are expected to be located based on LQCD studies of the N* spectrum. This presentation will report results from ongoing analyses for KY electroproduction and prospects for future studies will be discussed.

Speaker: Dr Lucilla Lanza (University of Rome Tor Vergata)

12:35 PM Results from the Jefferson Lab MARATHON experiment

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Speaker: Gerassimos Petratos

11:00 AM → 1:00 PM ML School

Convener: Prof. Pietro Vischia (Universidad de Oviedo and Instituto de Ciencias y Tecnologías Espaciales de Asturias (ICTEA))

1:05 PM → 2:00 PM Lunch

2:00 PM → 4:30 PM Break

4:30 PM → 5:00 PM Coffee break

5:00 PM → 7:25 PM Heavy Ion Collisions and Critical Phenomena

Convener: Dr Evgeny Zabrodin

5:00 PM Anisotropic flow in ultra-central Pb--Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=5.36$ TeV with ALICE

Anisotropic flow measurements in heavy-ion collisions are sensitive to the spatial distribution of the initial state, and QGP transport properties such as the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio $(\eta/s)$. Hydrodynamic models successfully describe such flow measurements over a wide centrality range. However, the hydrodynamic description of anisotropic flow deviates from the data in ultra-central collisions. An octupole deformation of the $\textbf{$^{208}$Pb}$ nuclei has been proposed as a remedy to improve the modeling of the measured $v_{3} \{2\} / v_{2} \{2\}$ ratio. Such a deformation should manifest in triangular flow fluctuations via measurements of the $v_3\{4\}/v_3 \{2\}$ ratio.
In this talk, we present multi-particle elliptic flow measurements of the coefficient $v_{n}\{m\}$ in Pb--Pb collisions with LHC Run 3 data over the full centrality range. We will also present measurements from ultra-central collisions and discuss whether there is experimental evidence for an octupole deformation.

Speaker: Iris Likmeta (University of Houston (US))

5:25 PM Centrality dependence of Lévy-stable two-pion Bose-Einstein correlations in sqrt(s(NN)) = 200 GeV Au+Au collisions at PHENIX

The PHENIX experiment measured the centrality dependence of two-pion Bose-Einstein correlation functions in √𝑠𝑁⁢𝑁=200GeV Au+Au collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The data are well represented by Lévy-stable source distributions. The extracted source parameters are the correlation-strength parameter 𝜆, the Lévy index of stability 𝛼, and the Lévy-scale parameter 𝑅 as a function of transverse mass 𝑚𝑇 and centrality. The 𝜆⁡(𝑚𝑇) parameter is constant at larger values of 𝑚𝑇, but decreases as 𝑚𝑇 decreases. The Lévy-scale parameter 𝑅⁡(𝑚𝑇) decreases with 𝑚𝑇 and exhibits proportionality to the length scale of the nuclear overlap region. The Lévy exponent 𝛼⁡(𝑚𝑇) is independent of 𝑚𝑇 within uncertainties in each investigated centrality bin, but shows a clear centrality dependence. At all centralities, the Lévy exponent 𝛼 is significantly different from that of Gaussian (𝛼=2) or Cauchy (𝛼=1) source distributions. Comparisons to the predictions of Monte-Carlo simulations of resonance-decay chains show that, in all but the most peripheral centrality class (50%–60%), the obtained results are inconsistent with the measurements, unless a significant reduction of the in-medium mass of the 𝜂′ meson is included. In each centrality class, the best value of the in-medium 𝜂′ mass is compared to the mass of the 𝜂 meson, as well as to several theoretical predictions that consider restoration of U𝐴⁢(1) symmetry in hot hadronic matter.

Speaker: Tamas Novak (MATE Institute of Technology Karoly Robert Campus (HU))

5:50 PM Overview of collective dynamics with STAR at RHIC

High-energy heavy-ion collisions offer a unique opportunity to study the dynamics of nuclear matter. Analyzing flow harmonics such as directed, elliptic, and higher order flow harmonics ($v_{1}$, $v_{2}$, and $v_{n}$, $n >$ 2) provides insights into the dynamics and properties of the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). The $v_{1}$ slope ($dv_{1}/dy$) at mid-rapidity of net-baryons is expected to be sensitive to the first-order phase transition. The number of constituent quark (NCQ) scaling of $v_{2}$ is considered a signal of the formation of QGP. Triangular flow $(v_{3})$, typically arising from initial state fluctuations, is expected to provide constraints on the initial state geometry and fluctuations.

In this talk, we will discuss measurements based on various data sets collected by the STAR experiment at RHIC, focusing on collective flow at top RHIC energy ($\sqrt{s_{NN}} =$ 200 GeV), the Beam Energy Scan (BES) program ($\sqrt{s_{NN}} =$ 3.0 to 62.4 GeV), including the Fixed Target (FXT) program ($\sqrt{s_{NN}} <$ 4.5 GeV). This includes results from the data collected with Au+Au collisions, smaller systems such as O+O and Cu+Cu, as well as deformed nuclei such as Isobars (Ru+Ru and Zr+Zr) and U+U collisions. We will discuss transverse momentum ($p_{T}$), rapidity ($y$), and centrality dependence, as well as beam energy dependence of flow harmonics. The experimental results will be compared with model calculations to improve our understanding of the underlying physics mechanisms in heavy-ion collisions.

Speaker: Dr Vipul Bairathi (Instituto de Alta Investigación, Universidad de Tarapacá)

6:15 PM Searching the Chiral Magnetic Effect with the STAR Detector: An Overview

The Chiral Magnetic Effect (CME) is a quantum phenomenon arising from the interplay of topological charge fluctuations and strong magnetic fields in the early stages of heavy-ion collisions. The STAR experiment at RHIC provides a unique environment to search for CME signatures through high-energy nucleus-nucleus collisions. This talk presents an overview of STAR’s CME program, with a focus on charge-dependent azimuthal correlations, specifically using the γ and δ correlators, which are sensitive to potential CME signals and background contributions. Emphasis is placed on recent high-statistics isobaric collision data (Ru+Ru and Zr+Zr), where a stronger CME signal is expected in Ru+Ru due to its larger magnetic field. This overview aims to summarize the current status of the CME search and highlight future directions.

Speaker: Dr Jagbir Singh (Instituto De Alta Investigación, Universidad de Tarapacá (CL))

6:40 PM Differential study of $\Lambda$-hyperon polarization in central heavy-ion collisions

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Speaker: Mr Oleksandr Vitiuk (University of Wroclaw (PL))

7:00 PM Exploring system size dependence of directed flow in heavy-ion collisions through the transport model

Directed flow ($v_1$) is the first-order harmonic of the Fourier expansion of the particle azimuthal angle distribution with respect to the reaction plane. It describes the collective sideward deflection of particles and is believed to be generated in the very early stages of heavy-ion collisions. Various hydrodynamic and nuclear transport models suggest that $v_{1}$ in the mid-rapidity region is sensitive to the expanding participant matter during the initial collision stages. The bulk of Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) is primarily composed of low-$p_{T}$ hadrons produced through soft processes, exhibiting a tilt in rapidity. The asymmetry between hadrons produced from hard and soft processes in the initial state results in a negative $v_{1}$ for hard partons. Therefore, $p_{T}$ dependence of $v_{1}$ is crucial for understanding the hard-soft asymmetry in the flow profile of heavy-ion collisions. Additionally, system size dependence of $v_{1}$ enhances our understanding of the collective dynamics and the subsequent evolution of QCD matter, providing valuable insights into the initial conditions of heavy-ion collisions.

In this talk, we will present rapidity-odd directed flow in various collision systems (O+O, Cu+Cu, Ru+Ru, Zr+Zr, Au+Au, and U+U) at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} =$ 200 GeV using using a multi-phase transport model (AMPT) model. We will discuss the dependence of $v_{1}$ on pseudo-rapidity ($\eta$) and transverse momentum ($p_{T}$). We will also discuss the slope of directed flow ($dv_{1}/dy$) across different systems and compared with the available experimental results.

Speaker: Dr Kishora Nayak (Panchayat College (Govt.), Sambalpur University)

5:00 PM → 7:00 PM Workshop on Dark matter from micro to macro

Convener: Prof. Andrej Arbuzov (Joint Institute for Nuclear Research)

5:00 PM Picolensing as a probe of compact dark matter

The gravitational lensing parallax of gamma-ray bursts (GRB), also known as picolensing, is a promising probe of compact dark matter, such as primordial black holes (PBH). A future space mission consisting of two X-ray/gamma-ray detectors in the Swift/BAT class can probe PBHs in the asteroid-mass window — a range of masses that has been notoriously hard to constrain by any other means. I will discuss the robustness of the projected reach of such mission with respect to the astrophysical uncertainties, most important being the uncertainty in observed GRB angular sizes. I will show that a setup with the separation between the two detectors on the order of the Earth–L2 distance makes such a mission robust. Baselines on the order of an astronomical unit further extend the reach to higher masses with the sensitivity competitive or exceeding the existing microlensing constraints. Implications of these results to other types of compact dark matter will be briefly discussed.

Speaker: Dr Sergey Sibiryakov (McMaster U. & Perimeter Inst.)

5:30 PM Sub-GeV Dark Matter and X-rays

For decades, we have been looking for Dark Matter in the form of WIMPs, but many other possibilities exist. Light DM, intended as having a mass between 1 MeV and about 1 GeV, is one of these possibilities, which is interesting both theoretically and phenomenologically. Testing it via Indirect Detection is more challenging than WIMPs, but X-ray measurements provide a very powerful handle. They currently impose stringent constraints, and allow in perspective to explore further this relatively new region of the parameter space.

Speaker: Marco Cirelli (CNRS LPTHE Jussieu)

6:00 PM Primordial Black Hole Evaporation as a Solution to the $^7$Li Abundance Problem

The potential resolution of the problem of theoretically predicted
excessive $^7$Li abundance is explored through its destruction by nucleons emitted from evaporating primordial black holes. It is demonstrated that the $^7$Li-to-baryon number density ratio can be reduced to the observed value of $^7$Li/B $\sim 1.6 \times 10^{-10}$ by converting $^7$Li into $^8$Li or $^8$Be, both of which rapidly decay into pairs of Helium-4 nuclei.

Speaker: Elena Arbuzova (Dubna State University and Novosibirsk State University)

6:30 PM Peculiarities of QFT in expanding spaces

We discuss equilibration process in expanding universes as compared to the thermalization process in Minkowski space--time. The final goal is to answer the following question: Is the equilibrium reached before the rapid expansion stops and quantum effects have a negligible effect on the background geometry or stress--energy fluxes in a highly curved early Universe have strong effects on the expansion rate and the equilibrium is reached only after the drastic decrease of the space--time curvature?

Speaker: Emil Akhmedov

5:00 PM → 5:50 PM Workshop on Instruments and Methods

Convener: Prof. Shalini Thakur (Instituto De Alta Investigación, Universidad de Tarapacá (CL))

5:00 PM Beam test campaign of the SiPM-based RICH detector for the future ALICE 3 experiment

In order to exploit the physics opportunities at the HL-LHC era, the ALICE collaboration is proposing a completely new experiment, namely ALICE 3. The ALICE 3 apparatus includes a Ring-Imaging Cherenkov (RICH) detector for high-energy charged particle identification providing Cherenkov-based timing measurements. It is equipped with an aerogel radiator coupled to Silicon Photomultiplier (SiPM) arrays readout by a custom electronics with a required single-photon time resolution at the level of 100ps. A small-scale prototype for this detector has been produced and two different front-end systems for charge and timing measurements have been assembled, equipped with Petiroc 2A ASIC and Radioroc 2 ASIC connected to a picoTDC with 3ps resolution. A custom readout board based on MOSAIC (MOdular System for Acquisition, Interface and Control) equipped with a Xilinx Artix7 FPGA has been designed for the control of the front-end boards and for data acquisition. The detector prototype has been tested with the designed electronics during dedicated beam tests at the CERN PS T10 beam line with pions and protons showing a charged particle time resolution better than 70 ps. The test beam setup and results are discussed in detail in the contribution.

Speaker: Liliana Congedo (Universita e INFN, Bari (IT))

5:25 PM Advancements and Challenges in the ATLAS Liquid Argon Calorimeter Trigger and Readout Electronics for HL-LHC

To meet the demands of increased instantaneous luminosity at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), significant upgrades have been implemented on the ATLAS Liquid Argon (LAr) Calorimeters. This presentation will cover the performance of the upgraded trigger readout electronics, currently running, and the status of the readout electronics upgrade for the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC), in preparation.

New trigger readout electronics have been installed during the last LHC long shutdown (LS2) to handle the increased data throughput. On the detector side, 124 new electronic boards digitize at high speed ten times more signals than the legacy system. Downstream, large FPGAs process up to 20 Tbps of data to compute deposited energies. Additionally, a new control and monitoring infrastructure has been developed. This contribution will detail the performance of the new system and the milestones achieved in phasing out the legacy analog trigger in favor of the new digital trigger for Run 3.

Looking into the future, the ATLAS LAr Calorimeter readout electronics are being upgraded to support the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC). This includes the development of custom preamplifiers and shapers with low noise and excellent linearity, a new ADC chip with two gains, and new calibration boards with minimal non-linearity and uniformity issues across all calorimeter channels. New ATCA-compliant signal processing boards equipped with FPGAs and high-speed links receive detector data and perform energy and time reconstruction. A new timing and control system has also been designed to ensure seamless operation. Machine learning approaches, including convolutional and recurrent neural networks, are being explored to outperform the optimal signal filter currently used in energy resolution. The latest developments towards the full production of the upgrade components will be presented.

Speaker: LAr speaker committee

5:50 PM → 6:40 PM Cosmology, Astrophysics, Gravity, Mathematical Physics

Convener: Prof. Shalini Thakur (Instituto De Alta Investigación, Universidad de Tarapacá (CL))

5:50 PM FIT: a high-resolution scintillating-fiber tracker with SiPM readout for future space applications

Past and current experiments have raised key open questions about the physics of charged cosmic rays and gamma rays, highlighting the need for a new generation of space missions to deepen our understanding. The challenge of achieving direct detection at higher energies, along with the demand for improved energy and angular resolution, is driving the development of next-generation detectors. FIT is a modular, high-resolution particle tracker made of scintillating fibers read out with silicon photomultipliers. A miniature version of FIT, called MiniFIT, has been designed, constructed, and tested with particle beams at CERN. The overall FIT design, as well as the design and physics performance of MiniFIT, will be presented in this contribution.

Speaker: Kimberly Sarah Keyser (EPFL - Ecole Polytechnique Federale Lausanne (CH))

6:15 PM EPSI R&D: A Novel Charge Sign Discrimination Technique for Electrons and Positrons in Space

The direct detection of antimatter in cosmic rays is crucial for understanding the mechanisms driving their acceleration and propagation. It also serves as a powerful tool in the indirect search for dark matter. Traditionally, charge sign discrimination has relied on magnetic spectrometers. However, these instruments are not well suited for extending measurements to higher energies within short time frames. As current and future space missions at the high-energy frontier primarily utilize large-scale calorimeters, there is a pressing need for an alternative charge sign discrimination technique that can be integrated with such systems.

This is the central goal of the Electron Positron Space Instrument (EPSI) project - a two-year R&D initiative funded in Italy under the PRIN (Projects of Relevant National Interest) program. The project aims to revisit and develop a concept proposed long ago: exploiting the synchrotron radiation emitted by charged particles as they traverse Earth's geomagnetic field. By simultaneously detecting the lepton with an electromagnetic calorimeter and the associated synchrotron photons with an X-ray detector, it becomes possible to distinguish electrons from positrons on an event-by-event basis. The key challenge lies in developing an X-ray detection array with a large active area, high detection efficiency, a low energy threshold, and compatibility with the constraints of space applications.

In this presentation, we assess the feasibility of implementing this technique in future space missions. We present a preliminary instrument design and address the challenges posed by astrophysical backgrounds. In addition, we introduce the concept for the X-ray detector, which consists of a detection cell made up of a small scintillator coupled to a large-area SiPM, wrapped with an enhanced specular reflector, and featuring a thin aluminum layer serving as the entrance window. Various configurations of these components and geometries are currently being tested through both laboratory measurements and detailed simulations.

We will present the current status of the EPSI R&D project and outline the next steps toward achieving its objectives.

Speaker: Giacomo De Giorgi (University of Florence)

6:40 PM → 7:05 PM Workshop on Instruments and Methods

Convener: Prof. Shalini Thakur (Instituto De Alta Investigación, Universidad de Tarapacá (CL))

6:40 PM HGCAL: A novel calorimeter at HL-LHC phase

The High‑Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) upgrade presents formidable challenges in the forward region of the CMS detector, particularly due to intense radiation levels and pileup. To address these challenges, the CMS collaboration is replacing its endcap calorimeters with a high‑granularity calorimeter (HGCAL), featuring unprecedented transverse and longitudinal segmentation and delivering 5D space–time–energy readout. Silicon sensors—with cell sizes of 0.5–1.0 sq. cm—constitute the electromagnetic section and highly irradiated regions of the hadronic section, while plastic scintillator tiles with SiPM readout cover the lower‑radiation areas. The design supports advanced particle-flow reconstruction, enabling fine shower structure measurement, excellent energy resolution, and enhanced pileup rejection. Fast timing resolution (up to 30 ps) further boosts the calorimeter’s ability to resolve collisions in dense environments.

Speaker: Mukund Nanasaheb Shelake (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (IN))

7:00 PM → 7:55 PM ML School

Convener: Prof. Pietro Vischia (Universidad de Oviedo and Instituto de Ciencias y Tecnologías Espaciales de Asturias (ICTEA))

8:00 PM → 9:00 PM Dinner

Tue, July 22

9:00 AM → 10:00 AM High Energy Particle Physics

Convener: Dr Rute Pedro (Laboratory of Instrumentation and Experimental Particle Physics (PT))

9:00 AM ATLAS highlights

Invited Talk

Speaker: Kun Liu (Tsung-Dao Lee Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University)

9:30 AM CMS upgrades

During the Long Shutdown 3, the CMS experiment is undergoing a significant upgrade, necessary to accommodate the increased luminosity expected in the subsequent data-taking phase, reaching up 5-7.5 x 10^{34} cm^{-2} s^-1. A completely new Tracker will be installed, offering tracking and trigger capabilities at Level-1 and extending its coverage to ∣η∣=3.5. The calorimetry system will also see major enhancements, including updated electronics in the ECAL barrel and the replacement of the endcap calorimeters with a High Granularity Calorimeter. Additionally, the novel MIP Timing Detector will be introduced to leverage precision timing for improved pile-up mitigation. The muon system will be upgraded with new electronics for the Drift Tubes (DT), Cathode Strip Chambers (CSC), and Resistive Plate Chambers (RPC). Further improvements include the installation of improved RPCs (iRPCs) with enhanced time resolution and new stations of Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) detectors, extending the muon spectrometer coverage up to ∣η∣=2.8. This talk presents the current status of these upgrades and the latest available results.

Speaker: Marcello Abbrescia (Universita e INFN, Bari (IT))

10:00 AM → 10:30 AM Workshop on Dark matter from micro to macro

Convener: Dr Rute Pedro (Laboratory of Instrumentation and Experimental Particle Physics (PT))

10:00 AM Updated BBN constraints on oscillation parameters, lepton asymmetry and the solution of dark radiation problem

Recent precise measurements of the primordially produced D and He-4 allowed us to update the BBN constraints on electron-sterile neutrino oscillations parameters. We discuss lepton asymmetry - neutrino oscillations interplay and derive cosmological constraints on lepton asymmetry. We discuss a solution to the dark radiation (DR) problem in BBN models with electron-sterile neutrino oscillations. We find that the required lepton asymmetry value for solving DR problem is
close to the value indicated by the EMPRESS experiment.

Speaker: Daniela Kirilova (Institute of Astronomy and NAO, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)

10:30 AM → 11:00 AM Coffee break

11:00 AM → 1:00 PM ML School

Convener: Prof. Pietro Vischia (Universidad de Oviedo and Instituto de Ciencias y Tecnologías Espaciales de Asturias (ICTEA))

11:00 AM → 12:15 PM Workshop on Instruments and Methods

Convener: Prof. Daniela Kirilova (Institute of Astronomy and NAO, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)

11:00 AM Overview of the DUNE detector technology

DUNE (Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment) is a long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment in the United States that primarily aims to measure the CP-violating phase in the leptonic sector and determine the neutrino mass ordering. The Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) accelerator at Fermilab will produce an intense neutrino beam, which will be studied at two detector sites separated by a 1300 km baseline.
The Near Detector complex at Fermilab will characterize the unoscillated neutrino flux using three detectors: a liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC), a high-pressure gas time projection chamber, and an on-axis beam monitor. The first two detectors are designed to be movable along the transverse beam axis, allowing for detailed analyses of the neutrino energy spectrum.
The Far Detector complex, located at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in South Dakota, will measure the oscillated neutrino flux using four massive LArTPC detectors installed 1.5 km underground. The first two Far Detector modules will use vertical and horizontal drift configurations respectively, while the design of the remaining two modules is still under discussion.
This talk will present the technologies of the Near and Far Detectors, with a focus on their performance in achieving DUNE’s physics objectives within the constraints of installation and operation procedures.

Speaker: Laura Amelie Zambelli (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR))

11:25 AM STAR Forward Upgrade: Design, Measurements, and Future Plans

The STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) has upgraded its capabilities in the pseudorapidity region of $2.5<\eta<4.0$ to help explore cold QCD physics in the very high and low regions of Bjorken-x, and the longitudinal structure of the initial state in relativistic heavy ion collisions. This is possible by utilizing the unique ability of RHIC to collide polarized protons, as well as heavy ions. The upgrade has been successfully installed in 2022 for the RHIC Run 22 and has had a successful data taking in the years since. These data will allow STAR to make precise measurements of transverse single spin asymmetries of Drell-Yan, jets, hadrons in jets, dijets and many other measurements. The forward upgrade includes two separate tracking systems: a silicon tracker, and a small-strip thin gap chamber. Downstream from the trackers is a Pb scintillator sampling electromagnetic calorimeter and further down from that is a steel scintillator sampling hadronic calorimeter. The calorimeters will utilize an existing STAR detector, the event plane detector, as a preshower. This talk will describe the design of the STAR forward upgrade as well as the physics goals and some of the first measurements from RHIC run 22.

Speaker: Dr David Kapukchyan (University of California, Riverside)

11:50 AM Upgrade of the CMS Muon System with GEM Detectors

The CMS detector is being upgraded for the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) run to begin in 2030. As part of the upgrade, the forward muon system is being strengthened with Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) detectors to ensure robust performance in high-luminosity and high-background conditions in the forward region of the CMS detector. The experiment has installed 4 wheels each containing 36 chambers as part of the GE1/1 stations, covering 1.55 < | η | < 2.18, and is operational since 2023, delivering excellent efficiency and stability. The GE2/1 station, consisting of 36 chambers or 288 modules, partially installed during recent technical stops, will further extend the coverage and granularity in the forward region 1.62 < |η| < 2.43. It will be mounted during the year-end technical stop after 2030. The ME0 station is planned for installation during Long Shutdown 3 (2026-2029) to extend the muon system’s pseudo rapidity coverage to |η| ≈ 2.8. The ME0 system will consist of 36 stacks of 6 modules each. With six layers of triple-GEM detectors per stack, ME0 is designed to handle intense backgrounds during the HL-LHC run while significantly improving tracking and triggering performance. This talk presents the overall status of the GEM upgrade and highlights the performance of GE1/1.

Speaker: Shalini Thakur (Instituto De Alta Investigación, Universidad de Tarapacá (CL))

12:15 PM → 1:00 PM High Energy Particle Physics

Convener: Prof. Daniela Kirilova (Institute of Astronomy and NAO, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)

12:15 PM Improving ICARUS track reconstruction algorithms

The ICARUS experiment is part of the Short-Baseline Neutrino (SBN) program at Fermilab. The main goal of the experiment is to investigate the possibility of sterile neutrinos in the O(1 eV) mass region and provide clarification of the anomaly detected from the Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector (LSND) and MiniBooNE experiments.
The ICARUS-T600 detector is a Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LAr-TPC), that can provide excellent 3D imaging and calorimetric reconstruction of any ionizing particles. This detection technique allows a detailed study of neutrino interactions, spanning a wide energy spectrum (from a few keV to several hundreds of GeV). The detector consists of two identical adjacent modules, filled with a total of 760 tons of ultra-pure liquid argon. Each module houses two LAr-TPCs separated by a common cathode with a maximum drift distance of 1.5 m, equivalent to about 1 ms drift time for the nominal 500 V/m electric drift field. The anode is made of three parallel wire planes positioned 3 mm apart, where the stainless-steel wires are oriented on each plane at a different angle with respect to the horizontal direction (+60^°,-60^°,0^°). The first two planes (Induction 1 and Induction 2) provide a non-destructive charge measurement, whereas the ionization charge is fully collected by the last collection plane. In total, 53248 wires with a 3 mm pitch and length up to 9 m are installed in the detector.
In the first stage of the reconstruction, segments of waveforms corresponding to physical signals (hits) are searched for in the deconvolved wire waveform with a threshold-based hit-finding algorithm. Each hit is then fitted with a Gaussian, whose area is proportional to the number of drift electrons generating the signal. In the second stage of the reconstruction, hits are passed as input to Pandora, a framework software composed of different pattern recognition algorithms, that performs a 3D reconstruction of the full image recorded in the collected event, including the identification of interaction vertices and tracks and showers inside the TPC. These are organized into a hierarchical structure (called slice) of particles generated starting from a primary interaction vertex.
In some cases, related to the inefficiencies in the hit detection or excessive deflection of the particle trajectory, Pandora breaks the particle's track into two or more smaller pieces and considers each piece as an independent track. We studied this phenomenon focusing on primary muons from ν_μ CC interactions contained in a single module with a track at least 20 cm long, to exclude delta rays. The study determined that about 7-8% of the muon tracks are broken. Approximately 80% of the times, Pandora assigns all segments of the track to the same slice (intra-slice track split), while in the remaining 20% of the cases, one of the segments is associated with another slice (extra-slice track split).
To mitigate this phenomenon, we designed an algorithm that detects and stitches the tracks broken by Pandora for the intra-slice split. In Monte Carlo simulations, the algorithm showed an efficiency exceeding 80% and a purity exceeding 93%.

Speaker: Alessandro Maria Ricci (University of Pisa and INFN Pisa)

12:35 PM Overview of the trigger and DAQ systems in CMS

The CMS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) operates a sophisticated trigger and data acquisition (DAQ) system, designed to efficiently select and record collision events of interest from an input rate of up to 40 MHz. The L1 trigger, implemented with custom hardware, uses coarse detector information to reduce the event rate to $\mathcal{O}(100)$ kHz. The HLT, software-based and running on a large computing farm, further refines the event selection using full detector granularity, bringing the rate down to around 5 kHz for permanent storage of full event information. The collection, processing, and storage of the data is handled by the high-throughput DAQ system, which enables event building at a rate of $\mathcal{O}(100)$ kHz, leveraging state-of-the-art network technologies. An overview of the architecture, performance, and developments of the trigger and DAQ systems is presented.

Speaker: Daniele Trocino (Universita e INFN Torino (IT))

1:00 PM → 2:00 PM Lunch

2:00 PM → 4:30 PM Break

4:30 PM → 5:00 PM Coffee break

5:00 PM → 6:15 PM High Energy Particle Physics

Convener: Prof. Michael Eides (University of Kentucky)

5:00 PM Upgrade of the CMS Electromagnetic Calorimeter for HL-LHC

The forthcoming High Luminosity upgrade of the CERN Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) promises to deliver unprecedented levels of instantaneous and integrated luminosity. This enhancement will be accompanied by a substantial increase in the average number of proton-proton interactions per bunch crossing, reaching approximately 200. In response to these formidable challenges, the CMS detector is undergoing an extensive Phase-2 upgrade, which encompasses significant improvements to the electromagnetic calorimeter (ECAL). While novel detector modules will be deployed in the endcap regions, the ECAL barrel’s lead tungstate crystals and associated photodetectors will be able to endure the elevated radiation and operational demands. Nonetheless, the entire readout and trigger electronics infrastructure must be fully revamped to satisfy the stringent performance requirements imposed by the HL-LHC environment and the increased trigger latency. Each of the 61,200 ECAL barrel crystals will be equipped with two ASICs: one dedicated to signal amplification across dual gain settings, and another—a 160 MHz sampling rate Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) featuring lossless data compression—to facilitate the transmission of channel data to off-detector electronics. Trigger primitive generation, supported by advanced reconstruction algorithms and a novel data acquisition system, will be performed on high-performance FPGA-based processor boards. These upgrades are critical for maintaining the detector’s exceptional energy resolution and for markedly enhancing the timing precision for electrons and photons with energies exceeding 30 GeV, achieving resolutions on the order of a few tens of picoseconds. This presentation will elucidate the design rationale and current status of the individual components comprising the upgraded ECAL barrel detector. It will also highlight the outcomes of recent tests conducted during beam campaigns at CERN SPS, where a prototype full readout chain was employed to evaluate energy and time resolution. Furthermore, the discussion will underscore the anticipated impact of these advancements on physics analysis in the CMS research program.

Speaker: Federica De Riggi (Sapienza Universita e INFN, Roma I (IT))

5:25 PM The Belle II Upgrade Program

The Belle II detector at the SuperKEKB accelerator complex is covering a wide range of exciting physics topics. To achieve the project's research goals, a substantial increase of the data sample to $50$ab$^{−1}$ is needed, and for that, the luminosity has to reach the ambitious goal of $6\times 10^{35}$ cm$^{−2}$ s$^{−1}$. The progress towards the design luminosity is accompanied by research and development of the accelerator, operation methods, detector components, as well as their upgrades. In the present contribution, we will discuss the status and plans of the project, timescales for upgrades, their motivations, and opportunities, an overview of upgrade options, and finish with an outlook and perspectives.

Speaker: Ezio Torassa (Universita e INFN, Padova (IT))

5:50 PM Probing neutral triple gauge couplings via Z(ll)gamma productions with Future Lepton Collider detector simulation and with LHC-ATLAS data

Ref. Front. Phys. 20(1), 015201 (2025) [arXiv:2404.15937, doi:10.15302/frontphys.2025.015201]
Neutral triple gauge couplings (nTGCs) are absent in the Standard Model (SM) and at the dimension-6 level in the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT), arising first from dimension-8 operators. As such, they provide a unique window for probing new physics beyond the SM. These dimension-8 operators can be mapped to nTGC form factors whose structure is consistent with the spontaneously-broken electroweak gauge symmetry of the SM. In this work, we study the probes of nTGCs in the reaction
$e^{+}e^{-}\to Z\gamma$ with $Z\to \ell^{+}\ell^{-}(\ell=e,\mu)$ at an $e^{+}e^{-}$ collider. We perform a detector-level simulation and analysis of this reaction at the Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC) with collision energy $\sqrt{s}$ = 240 GeV and an integrated luminosity of 20 ab$^{−1}$. We present the sensitivity limits on probing the new physics scales of dimension-8 nTGC operators via measurements of the corresponding nTGC form factors.

Ref. ATLAS-CONF-2025-001
The measurements of the cross sections for 𝑍𝛾 production and the search for neutral triple gauge couplings (nTGC) through $𝑍𝑍\gamma$ or $\gamma^{∗}𝑍\gamma$ vertices are presented, using the full Run2 proton-proton dataset of 140 fb$^{−1}$ produced by the LHC at √𝑠 = 13 TeV and collected by the ATLAS detector. Kinematic distributions are measured using events with a 𝑍 boson candidate decaying into either an 𝑒+𝑒− or 𝜇+𝜇− pair and a photon. The previous results adopted the conventional form factors which only satisfy 𝑈(1) symmetry, which are unphysical, and the overestimation by two orders of magnitude was obtained. Hence, the nTGC form factors satisfying fully $𝑆𝑈(2)_𝐿 \times 𝑈(1)_𝑌$ gauge-invariant symmetry have been proposed. A high photon transverse momentum threshold of 200 GeV, a jet veto selection, and a narrow 𝑍 mass window requirement are applied to define the region of phase space and to optimize the sensitivity to nTGCs, which provide more physically meaningful constraints. The 95% C.L. limits on the nTGC parameters are extracted from the measured differential cross sections, and corrected the overestimation on form factors with the nTGC formulation for the first time at the LHC.

Speaker: Danning Liu (Tsung-Dao Lee Institute (CN) & Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ.(CN))

5:00 PM → 7:00 PM ML School

Convener: Prof. Pietro Vischia (Universidad de Oviedo and Instituto de Ciencias y Tecnologías Espaciales de Asturias (ICTEA))

6:15 PM → 6:50 PM Workshop on Dark matter from micro to macro

Convener: Prof. Michael Eides (University of Kentucky)

6:15 PM Who was first: PBH or galaxies? Pro and contra.

.

It is usually assumed that supermassive black holes (SMBH) are created by matter accretion to excessive
density in galactic centers. However, the estimated necessary time is by far longer than the age of the universe. Moreover, SMBHs are observed also in the early universe, when the available time is much shorter. These and
plenty of other facts present strong evidence in favor of an inverted mechanism of galaxy formation: firstly PBH emerged in the very early universe and later they seeded galaxy creation. This conjecture is supported, in particular, by the measured mass spectrum of PBH, the appearance of intermediate mass black holes in dwarf galaxies and globular clusters, existence of supermassive black holes in (almost) empty space in contemporary
and early universe, and observations of antimatter in our Galaxy: in particular, of antinuclej, antistars and even possible star-antistar annihilation.

Speaker: Prof. Alexander Dolgov (Novosibirsk State University and BLTP JINR)

7:00 PM → 8:00 PM Opera Gala Concert, OAC, Kalliopi Petrou (soprano), Tommaso Dorigo (Piano).

8:00 PM → 9:00 PM Dinner

Wed, July 23

9:00 AM → 9:30 AM Workshop on Dark matter from micro to macro

Convener: Dr David Kapukchyan (University of California, Riverside)

9:00 AM Vacuum Polarization Effects During the Reheating Epoch

Quantum effects during the epoch of the universe reheating after inflation are considered. A semiclassical approach to the theory of gravity is applied in connection with the Starobinsky inflation model. Some subtleties associated with taking into account quantum effects in the one-loop approximation are clarified. An estimate of the contribution of vacuum polarization in the energy-momentum tensor of matter fields to the scalaron decay width is presented. The talk is based on recent paper
arXiv:2505.03453 [gr-qc].

Speaker: Andrej Arbuzov (Joint Institute for Nuclear Research)

9:30 AM → 10:00 AM High Energy Particle Physics

Convener: Dr David Kapukchyan (University of California, Riverside)

9:30 AM Recent calculation of the magnetic moment of the muon

Recently there have been stronger and stonger disagreements between direct measurements of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon and the standard-model prediction. Such a large discrepancy should signal the discovery of interactions or particles not present in the standard model. However, two independent determinations of the most uncertain contribution to the standard-model prediction display significantly less tension with the measurement. Here we present a new first-principle calculation of this contribution. We reduce uncertainties compared to our earlier (2020) BMW computation by 40%. To reach this unprecedented level of precision we improve on many aspects of the calculation. Namely, we perform large-scale lattice QCD simulations on finer lattices than in 2020, allowing for an even more accurate continuum extrapolation. We also include a small, long-distance contribution obtained using input from experiments in a low-energy regime where they all agree. Combined with the extensive calculations of other standard model contributions, our result leads to a prediction that differs from the direct measurement by only 0.9 standard deviations. This provides a remarkable validation of the standard model to 0.37ppm.

Speaker: Zoltan Fodor

10:00 AM → 10:30 AM Special Session on Machine Learning

Convener: Dr David Kapukchyan (University of California, Riverside)

10:00 AM The Second AI Revolution In Fundamental Physics

In 2012 --the same year when ML methods proven super-human image classification power in the ImageNet challenge-- the CMS and ATLAS collaborations employed for the first time supervised learning tools for a major physics discovery (the Higgs boson). That constituted a revolution in how inference is extracted from complex data in high-energy physics: without ML tools before 2012, with ML tools after it.

A new revolution is now about to start, as artificial intelligence (AI) today allows machines to help us carry out the end-to-end, goal-oriented optimization of our experiments, achieving full co-design of the geometry and specifications of hardware instruments producing the raw data together with the details of software algorithms performing pattern recognition, dimensionality reduction, and inference. In this talk we will examine the status of this impending paradigm change, and the technical hurdles that need to be overcome to realize it.

Speaker: Tommaso Dorigo (Universita e INFN, Padova (IT))

10:30 AM → 11:00 AM Coffee break

11:00 AM → 11:30 AM Special Session on Machine Learning

Convener: Prof. Roberto Rossin (Universita e INFN, Padova (IT))

11:00 AM Machine Learning in ATLAS

Invited tak

Speaker: Michele D'Andrea (INFN e Universita Genova (IT))

11:30 AM → 1:00 PM High Energy Particle Physics

Convener: Prof. Roberto Rossin (Universita e INFN, Padova (IT))

11:30 AM Energy-momenutm trace and Hamiltonian decomposition

Mass of QED bound state is calculated as matrix element of EMT trace.
The problem of Hamiltonian decomposition in QED and QCD is discussed.

Speaker: Prof. Michael Eides (University of Kentucky)

12:00 PM Searches for Beyond the Standard Model Particles Decaying to Top Quarks, Higgs Bosons, and Gauge Bosons with CMS

The top quark, the Higgs boson, and the electroweak gauge bosons lie at the core of the Standard Model, and precisely where signs of new physics are most likely to emerge. In this talk, I’ll present the physics motivation behind searching for new heavy particles decaying into these states, the strategy we follow at CMS, and, in particular, how we target these decay signatures in the LHC environment. I’ll highlight what we learn from the data and how these results push the boundaries of where new physics could still be hiding.

Speaker: Haifa Rejeb Sfar (The State University of New York SUNY (US))

12:30 PM Searches for new phenomena beyond the Standard Model using the ATLAS detector

Many theories beyond the Standard Model predict new phenomena giving rise to observable final states. Examples include exotic Higgs bosons, supersymmetric particles, Z', W' bosons, KK gravitons, vector-like quarks/leptons or heavy leptons, or DM. Searches for new physics with such signatures, produced either resonantly or non-resonantly, are performed using the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. The most recent ATLAS results will be reported.

Speaker: Andrea Pareti (Pavia University and INFN (IT))

1:00 PM → 2:00 PM Lunch

2:00 PM → 4:30 PM Break

4:30 PM → 5:00 PM Coffee break

5:00 PM → 5:50 PM Heavy Ion Collisions and Critical Phenomena

Convener: Dr Tamas Novak

5:00 PM K* Production as a Probe of Final-State Hadronic Interactions in High Baryon Density Regimes at RHIC BES-II energies

Exploring the properties of strongly interacting matter at extreme temperatures and densities is a fundamental goal of relativistic heavy-ion collisions. Short-lived resonances such as $K^{*0}(\bar K^{*0})$ ($\sim 4.16$ fm/c) are considered one of the best candidates to investigate the late-stage hadronic phase produced in heavy-ion collisions. Due to their short lifetimes, the decay daughters of these resonances can experience various in-medium effects such as rescattering and regeneration. As a result, studying the ratio of resonances to their corresponding stable particles with similar quark content ($(K^{*0} + \bar K^{*0})/(K^{+} + K^{-})$) can provide insights into the interplay of these in-medium processes.

Here, we present precise measurements of the $K^{*0}(\bar K^{*0})$ mesons in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$= 7.7, 11.5, 14.6, 19.6, and 27 GeV, using data from the STAR Beam Energy Scan II (BES-II) program at RHIC. We present transverse momentum ($p_{T}$) spectra at mid-rapidity ($|y| < 1.0$) using its hadronic decay channel ($K^{*0}(\bar{K}^{*0}) \xrightarrow{} K^{\pm} + \pi^{\mp}$), $p_{T}$ -integrated yields ($dN/dy$), mean transverse momentum ($\langle p_{T} \rangle$) and particle ratios across different collision centralities and center-of-mass energies. The results will be compared with various model predictions, and the underlying physics will be explored and discussed in detail.

Speaker: Mr Pranjal Barik (Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Berhampur)

5:25 PM Investigation of the onset of deconfinement with the NA61/SHINE experiment

High-energy heavy-ion collisions provide a unique framework for studying the phase transition of strongly interacting matter. The NA61/SHINE experiment, located in the North Area of CERN's SPS, is a fixed-target facility designed to perform a systematic exploration of the QCD phase diagram. This is achieved through a two-dimensional scan that varies both the beam momentum (from 13A to 150/158A GeV/c) and the size of the colliding systems (p+p, p+Pb, Be+Be, Ar+Sc, Xe+La, Pb+Pb). Such a wide scan enables detailed studies of how collision dynamics evolve with system size and energy.
A central objective of the NA61/SHINE research program is to investigate the onset of deconfinement—the transition from hadronic matter to a quark-gluon plasma—by analyzing observables such as the strangeness-to-entropy ratio. According to the Statistical Model of the Early Stage (SMES), this ratio is expected to exhibit a horn-like structure within the SPS energy range. This presentation discusses the theoretical framework of the SMES, its assumptions, and compares recent NA61/SHINE results with other experimental data worldwide, contributing to a deeper understanding of the QCD phase transition.

Speaker: Ali Soheilbeigi Bazgir (Jan Kochanowski University (PL))

5:00 PM → 5:50 PM High Energy Particle Physics

Convener: Prof. Francesco Loparco (Universita e INFN, Bari (IT))

5:00 PM Current Status of the LHCf Experiment and Future Prospects with Proton-Oxygen Collisions

The main purpose of the Large Hadron Collider-forward (LHCf) experiment is to study the secondary particle spectrum in the very forward region of high-energy hadronic collisions at the LHC. The LHCf measurements play an important role in calibrating the hadronic interaction models used to simulate Extensive Air Showers (EAS), which originate from interactions between cosmic rays and atmospheric nuclei. Specifically, the LHCf experiment measures neutral particles—such as neutrons, photons, $\pi^0$, and $\eta$ mesons—produced in the very forward region of LHC primary collisions, which are highly relevant to the development of EAS.
Furthermore, LHC proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13.6 TeV are equivalent, in the fixed-target frame, to the interaction of a proton of nearly $10^{17}$ eV with a proton at rest. These considerations lead to the conclusion that the LHC can effectively reproduce the scenario of a hadronic interaction between a very high-energy cosmic proton and a nucleon in an atmospheric nucleus. With the LHCf experiment, it is therefore possible to measure the production rates of neutral particles that most significantly influence the development of the corresponding EAS.

Since the start of LHC operations, the LHCf experiment has collected data from proton-proton collisions at several center-of-mass energies, ranging from 0.9 TeV to 13.6 TeV, as well as from proton-lead collisions at nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energies of 5.02 TeV and 8.1 TeV. The main results include measurements of $\pi^0$, neutron, and $\eta$ meson production rates in the very forward region. Some of these results will be presented in this contribution, along with comparisons between LHCf experimental data and theoretical predictions from the most commonly used hadronic interaction models in air shower simulations.

In early July this year, the final LHCf data-taking operation is planned, during which the experiment will collect data from proton-oxygen collisions at a nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 9.6 TeV. This run, in addition to being the first at the LHC involving proton-oxygen collisions, is expected to be the most significant for the goals of the LHCf experiment, as it best reproduces the interaction between high-energy cosmic protons and atmospheric nuclei. The latest updates on this run, which is expected to conclude just a few days before the ICNFP conference, will also be presented.

Speaker: Elena Gensini (Universita e INFN, Firenze (IT))

5:25 PM Precision Timing with the CMS MIP Timing Detector for High-Luminosity LHC

The Large Hadron Collider will soon enter its High-Luminosity (HL-LHC) phase, to cope with the foreseen high pileup environment (up to 200 pp interactions per bunch-crossing) the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector is undergoing an extensive Phase 2 upgrade program. A novel precision timing detector, the Mip Timing Detector (MTD), will detect the passage of minimum ionizing particles (MIPs) with a time resolution of ~30-40 ps at a rate of 2.5 Mhit/s per channel at the beginning of HL-LHC operation. The precise timing information from the MTD will reduce the effects of the high levels of pileup expected at the HL-LHC, bringing new capabilities to CMS. The MTD will be composed of an endcap timing layer (ETL), instrumented with low-gain avalanche diodes and a barrel timing layer (BTL), based on LYSO:Ce crystals coupled to SiPMs. This contribution will provide an overview of the MTD design and its expanded physics capabilities.

Speaker: Prof. Roberto Rossin (Universita e INFN, Padova (IT))

5:00 PM → 5:50 PM Special Session on Machine Learning

Convener: Tommaso Dorigo (Universita e INFN, Padova (IT))

5:00 PM Exploiting the latent space of deep AutoEncoders for the identification of signal pulses in noisy time-series

In this contribution we propose a data-driven technique based on self-supervised deep neural networks, specifically convolutional and variational autoencoders (AE), developed to improve the sensitivity to signal pulses over a significant background in long waveforms.
The dataset consists of synthetic waveforms with around 10,000 samples; each time-series is composed of non-gaussian noise, with the addition of a log-normal shaped signal pulse in a fraction of the events. The AE model is set up to heavily compress the input waveform, allowing a direct study of the features of such a reduced representation in the latent space.
After a training of about 100 epochs on 7000 waveforms, a region in the latent space where the network encodes time-series presenting only background noise clearly emerges, allowing in turn to tag as signal candidates those falling outside this range. When applied on a test dataset of freshly generated waveforms, such a procedure correctly labels 100% of the events with a large signal, and the fraction of successful identifications only decreases for signal peak amplitudes comparable with the accidental pulses in the background.
This approach was designed to fully exploit the measurements in dual-phase Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers, as the one of the Recoil Directionality (ReD) experiment, a R&D apparatus built in the context of the Darkside project. The goal is the identification of delayed electroluminescence signals (S2) in gas, produced by very low energy (~ a few keV) nuclear recoils, with a sensitivity at least comparable to the conventional reconstructions. Furthermore, we aim to export this technique to other distinct experimental settings in the field of astroparticle physics.

This work is supported by ICSC – Italian National Research Centre for High Performance Computing, Big Data and Quantum Computing, funded by European Union – NextGenerationEU, and it has been carried out within the Spoke 2 (“Fundamental Research and Space Economy”) as part of the activities in the Working Group 3 (“Applications for experimental astroparticle physics and gravitational waves experiments”) under the use-case DAIDREAM (“DAta-driven IDentification of Rare Events in Astroparticle physics through Machine learning techniques”).

Speaker: Gioacchino Alex Anastasi (Università di Catania & INFN Catania)

5:25 PM Particle identification in high-granularity 3D calorimeters for space-borne applications

High granularity 3D calorimeters offer the opportunity to precisely reconstruct the 3D topology of electromagnetic and hadronic showers originating from isotropic sources. This distinctive capability not only allows for the reconstruction of events from a much wider field of view, but also enable analysis strategies that could yield additional information compared to those based on the traditional layer-by-layer analysis used in calorimeters common in particle and astroparticle physics experiments.

In this study, we present a strategy for analyzing the energy deposit in a 3D segmented crystal array calorimeter, using a parametrization of both longitudinal and transversal shapes of showers to implement likelihood tests on single events. This test has the potential to serve as a robust tool for discriminating electrons and positrons against hadronic particles, an essential feature expected by calorimeters in cosmic-ray measurements in space. A comparison with the performance from an artificial intelligence algorithm for the analysis of the shower footprint image in the crystal array will also be presented.

While this analysis was specifically developed using the High Energy cosmic Radiation Detector (HERD) calorimeter as a case study, its applicability may extend to any high granularity, homogeneous, isotropic calorimeter employed in particle physics experiments.

Speaker: Claudio Brugnoni (Universita e INFN, Perugia (IT))

5:50 PM → 6:50 PM Cosmology, Astrophysics, Gravity, Mathematical Physics

Convener: Francesco Loparco (Universita e INFN, Bari (IT))

5:50 PM The Zirè detector on board the NUSES space mission

The Ziré detector is one of the scientific payloads onboard the NUSES mission.
The detector will be dedicated to measuring the fluxes of electrons, protons and light nuclei with kinetic energies from a few MeV up to hundreds of MeV.
These will enable the study of low-energy cosmic rays, Sun-Earth environment, space weather and magnetosphere-ionosphere-lithosphere coupling (MILC).
The instrument is also designed to detect photons with energies ranging from 0.1 MeV up to 10 MeV, to study transient events such as gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), as well as other physical phenomena like solar flares.
All Zirè sub-detectors will feature a readout system based entirely on Silicon Photomultiplier (SiPM) technology.
This work will provide an overview of the design activities, scientific goals, and the current development status of the instrument.

Speaker: Giuliana Panzarini (Universita e INFN, Bari (IT))

6:10 PM A Two-Dimensional fit approach to sea-level muon flux modelling and its integration into Geant4 models

Accurate modelling of the sea-level muon flux is crucial for applications in particle physics, astrophysics, and geophysics, such as detector design and calibration, muon radiography and underground and neutrino physics experiments. While computationally efficient, traditional one-dimensional parameterisations often fall short in capturing the coupled dependencies of muon energy and zenith angle, especially at low energies. This work presents an optimised approach for parameterising the angular and energy distributions of muons using a two-dimensional (2D) fit methodology [1]. By leveraging extensive experimental data, three analytical models (Guan et al. [2], Gaisser et al.[3] and Bugaev-Reyna et al.[4]) were studied to investigate the accuracy of muon flux predictions, particularly in the low-energy regime below 1 GeV. The parameterisations capture key dependencies of muon flux on both energy and zenith angle, addressing limitations in traditional one-dimensional approximations.

The new 2D flux models have been integrated into a Geant4 simulation toolkit via a custom generator, enabling realistic and data-driven muon generation for surface and shallow-depth applications. Validation against benchmark datasets and muographic measurements confirms the models reliability and demonstrates improved agreement with observed flux distributions [1]. This advancement enhances the fidelity of simulations used in cosmic ray studies and supports the development of muon-based imaging and monitoring techniques. The approach is designed to be modular and easily extendable to site-specific flux adjustments or future high-precision datasets.

[1] C. Frosin et al., J. Phys. G: Nucl. Part. Phys. 52, 035002 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6471/adb6c3
[2] M. Guan et al., 2015 arXiv:1509.06176
[3] Gaisser T K, Engel R and Resconi E 2016 Cosmic Rays and Particle Physics 2nd edn (Cambridge University Press)
[4] D. Reyna et al., 2006 arXiv:hep-ph/0604145

Speaker: Catalin Frosin (Universita e INFN, Firenze (IT))

6:30 PM The ACROMASS project for the study of the charged components of the atmospheric cosmic radiation

Although various measures of atmospheric muons have been conducted between the 60s and 80s of the last century, the study of these particles is still of interest in two different fields of physics. The first is related to neutrinos. The precise measurement of the parameters that describe the phenomenon of oscillation between the three families of neutrinos known so far, through the study of atmospheric neutrinos, requires a precise estimate of the production energy and angular spectra of these particles, that can be obtained with detailed simulations calibrated with precise measurements of atmospheric muons spectra. The second is muon radiography, an imaging technique that uses atmospheric muons to produce radiographic representations of enormous volumes of materials and which requires the use of reliable simulations of the fluxes of atmospheric muons and their absorption inside materials.
Between the late 90s and the beginning of the 2000s, the INFN section of Florence and the Department of Physics of the University of Florence developed the ADAMO magnetic spectrometer, a test system for the preparation of the PAMELA satellite experiment. ADAMO was used in 2004 for a measurement of the inclusive momentum spectrum of cosmic rays at ground level at several zenith angles in the momentum range between 100 MeV/c and 130 GeV/c. Results were presented at the 29th ICRC held in 2005 in Pune (India).
The ACROMASS project, started in 2024, was funded by INFN for the enhancement of the ADAMO spectrometer and its completion with two auxiliary sub-detectors for particle identification (PID). The new apparatus will be used to measure atmospheric muons at different altitudes and latitudes in the momentum range between 100 MeV/c and 200 GeV/c and will also allow the study of the rarest charged components of cosmic rays at ground level.

References.
[1] M. Honda et al., PHYSICAL REVIEW D 100, 123022 (2019)
[2] L. Bonechi et al., Reviews in Physics 5 (2020) 100038
[3] L. Bonechi et al., Proceedings of 29th ICRC, Pune, India (2005), pp. 283-286

Speakers: Dr Catalin Frosin (INFN Firenze), Lorenzo Bonechi (Universita e INFN, Firenze (IT))

5:50 PM → 6:15 PM Cosmology, Astrophysics, Gravity, Mathematical Physics

Convener: Prof. Tommaso Dorigo (Universita e INFN, Padova (IT))

5:50 PM The scintillating fiber tracker of the Zirè detector onboard the NUSES satellite

NUSES is a space mission that will serve as a technological pathfinder for next-generation space-based detectors. Ziré, one of the two payloads onboard the satellite, is designed to measure the fluxes of electrons, protons, and light nuclei over a kinetic energy range from a few MeV up to several hundred MeV. It can also detect photons in the 0.1–10 MeV range for the study of transient phenomena such as GRBs. The detector consists of several subsystems: a Fiber Tracker (FTK) based on thin scintillating fibers read out by SiPM arrays, a Plastic Scintillator Tower, a calorimeter, an Anti-Coincidence System, and a Low Energy Module. This work presents the performance of the FTK, evaluated through beam test campaigns at the CERN PS and SPS facilities, complemented by a dynamic test. A reduced-scale prototype, Zirettino, was developed to validate the design, integrating a single FTK layer, a reduced PST configuration, and a partially instrumented CALOg. The system was read out using a custom Front-End Board based on the off-the-shelf CITIROC ASIC by Omega/Weeroc.

Speaker: Dr Leonarda Lorusso (INFN Bari)

5:50 PM → 6:40 PM High Energy Particle Physics

Convener: Dr Tamas Novak

5:50 PM Universal Fake Factor method to estimate hadronic tau backgrounds in ATLAS

rocesses involving tau leptons are important for Standard Model measurements and searches for new physics at the LHC. Due to the challenges of modelling hadronic tau decays and their associated backgrounds, data-driven estimation techniques are strongly favoured. This talk presents the Universal Fake Factor method, a novel approach for estimating the contribution of jets misidentified as tau leptons in ATLAS experiment data analysis. This method uses a linear combination of transfer factors, called Fake Factors, derived from samples enriched in different jet sources (light quarks, gluons, b-quarks, and pile-up) to predict the Fake Factor for any Signal Region. The systematic uncertainty on the estimated Fake Factors is evaluated and found to be between 15% and 35%, depending on the tau lepton transverse momentum and the tau associated charged-particle multiplicity. Given the method's generality, other experiments can also adopt it to estimate this type of background.

Speaker: Gabriela Martinovicova (Charles University (CZ))

6:15 PM From ENUBET to nuSCOPE: a monitored and tagged neutrino beam for high precision cross section measurements

The poor knowledge of neutrino cross sections at the GeV scale is projected to be responsible for some of the leading sources of uncertainty in next-generation oscillation experiments. Building on the ideas and R&D from ENUBET and NuTAG, we present a proposal for the nuSCOPE experiment (see arXiv:2503.21589). nuSCOPE is a high-precision, short-baseline neutrino experiment at CERN that employs neutrino monitoring and tagging. Instrumentation placed along the beamline and inside the decay tunnel enables percent-level $\nu_e$ and $\nu_{\mu}$ flux monitoring and a neutrino energy determination that is independent of final-state particle reconstruction at the neutrino detector. This opens up the possibility for neutrino cross section studies with unprecedented level of detail and precision. This contribution will present the beamline design, proposed instrumentation technologies, results from prototyping efforts, and scenarios for implementation at CERN. We will also highlight the physics potential of such a facility, particularly in the context of cross-section measurements relevant to DUNE and Hyper-Kamiokande.

Speaker: Leon Halic (Rudjer Boskovic Institute (HR))

6:15 PM → 6:40 PM Session on Other topics and interdisciplinary topics

Convener: Prof. Tommaso Dorigo (Universita e INFN, Padova (IT))

6:15 PM Identification of nuclear fragmentation isotopes in FOOT

In Particle Therapy, a highly precise dose distribution in treatment planning minimizes the risk of damaging healthy tissues. Both beam and target can undergo nuclear fragmentation, causing an undesired dose release, but the cross-sections of such processes are not well known, and very limited data are available on differential cross-sections with respect to energy and emission angle.
The FOOT experiment aims at addressing this issue through two alternative configurations, identifying the charge (Z) and mass (A) of secondary particles produced by proton, 4-He, 12-C, and 16-O beams in hadrontherapy treatments with a precision of 2–3% and 5% respectively.
Therefore, the FOOT calorimeter is required to achieve a resolution better than 2% on the fragments kinetic energy. This study evaluates the detector performance and its impact on the identification of mass isotopes produced by nuclear fragmentation. With reference to the 2024 data-taking campaign at CNAO (Pavia), the energy calibration process of the calorimeter is illustrated, along with its technical conditions and limitations. In the second part of the presentation, the first experimental results are shown, concerning the mass identification of fragments produced by 12-C at 200 MeV/u on a 5-mm thick graphite target. These results are obtained by combining measurements from the Calorimeter and other detectors of the FOOT experimental setup: in particular, the TOF-Wall (TW), which measures the atomic number (Z) of fragments and, in combination with the Start Counter (SC), their Time-Of-Flight.
Isotopes of H, He, Li, Be, B, and C were successfully identified, although further improvements are expected due to the preliminary nature of the analysis. However, most of the detector response effects, particularly those related to quenching phenomena, have been successfully modeled for different ion species.

Speaker: Benedetto Spadavecchia

6:40 PM → 7:30 PM High Energy Particle Physics

Convener: Prof. Tommaso Dorigo (Universita e INFN, Padova (IT))

6:40 PM Charmonium Decays at BESIII

Utilizing the world’s largest ψ(3686) data sample, the BESIII experiment
has conducted detailed studies of several critical charmonium decays. This talk will
focus on three landmark results: 1) Precision measurement of $η_c \to γγ$ via the decay
chain $ψ(3686) → π⁺π⁻J/ψ$; $J/ψ → γη_c$, achieving the most accurate determination of
this branching fraction to date. 2) First observations of $h_c$ radiative decays into
γπ⁺π⁻, γπ⁺π⁻η, γ2(π⁺π⁻), $γp\bar{p}$, and the resonant channel $h_c → γf_2(1270) → γπ⁺π⁻$,
unveiling novel insights into the hadronic transition dynamics of the $h_c$; 3)
High-precision studies of $χ_c^0$ decays into π⁺π⁻ and K⁺K⁻ final states, including
the determination of $χ_c^0$ resonance parameters (mass and width) with unprecedented
precision. These results provide critical constraints on theoretical models of $χ_c^0$
production and its potential gluonic content, advancing the search for glueball
candidates in the charmonium mass region.

Speaker: Peilian Liu (Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN))

7:05 PM Light Hadron Spectroscopy at BESIII

Although mesons have been known for decades, many questions about their nature remain unresolved. Beyond the conventional meson nonets, numerous candidates have been observed that may possess exotic structures, such as glueballs, hybrids, or tetraquarks. These states are particularly accessible in clean, gluon-rich environments.
The BESIII experiment, operating at the BEPCII electron-positron collider in Beijing since 2009, has collected world-leading, high-statistics datasets in the charmonium region. These provide unique opportunities to study exotic QCD states, not only within the charmonium sector but also across the light meson spectrum through charmonium decays. In particular, radiative decays of the J/ψ and ψ′ offer ideal conditions for the production of glueballs and hybrid states. Since these states are often hard to identify and disentangle, partial wave analysis are needed to determine the different contributions.
This talk will present recent results from BESIII on the study of light mesons, with a particular emphasis on the amplitude analysis techniques employed and their implications for hadron spectroscopy.

Speaker: Dr Meike Küßner (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)

6:40 PM → 8:00 PM ML School

Convener: Prof. Pietro Vischia (Universidad de Oviedo and Instituto de Ciencias y Tecnologías Espaciales de Asturias (ICTEA))

6:50 PM → 7:30 PM Workshop on Astro-Cosmo-Gravity

Convener: Francesco Loparco (Universita e INFN, Bari (IT))

6:50 PM Project Status of the Antarctic Demonstrator for the Advanced Particle-Astrophysics Telescope (ADAPT)

The Antarctic Demonstrator for the Advanced Particle-astrophysics Telescope (ADAPT) is a NASA-funded balloon-borne mission designed to validate key technologies for the forthcoming Advanced Particle-astrophysics Telescope (APT). APT is envisioned as a next-generation gamma-ray observatory, operating both as a pair-conversion telescope for 50 MeV to ~50 GeV γ-rays and as a Compton telescope extending down to MeV energies.​
Scheduled for a long-duration flight over Antarctica in the 2026–27 season, ADAPT aims to demonstrate advanced detection capabilities for gamma-ray transients and cosmic rays.​
The ADAPT instrument comprises a scintillating fiber tracker, an imaging CsI(Na) calorimeter, and an anti-coincidence detector. The calorimeter consists of a 3×3 array of 150 mm × 150 mm × 5 mm CsI(Na) tiles, with orthogonally oriented wavelength-shifting fibers on the top and bottom surfaces, read out by silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs). The fiber tracker employs 1.5 mm round scintillating fibers arranged in interleaved layers for both x and y coordinates. An anti-coincidence detector made of plastic scintillators surrounds the instrument to discriminate gamma rays from charged particles and assist in nuclei identification. Fast, low-power front-end electronics are under development for SiPM signal amplification (SMART) and digitization (ALPHA).​
ADAPT is expected to detect prompt signals from gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) with degree-scale localization and polarization constraints during its ~30-day flight, offering superior instantaneous sensitivity below 100 MeV compared to existing instruments. Additionally, the mission will measure cosmic-ray elemental abundances, demonstrating the potential for future space-based experiments to study ultra-heavy cosmic-ray nuclei.​
Extensive simulations, laboratory experiments, and beam tests have been conducted to evaluate the performance of each sub-detector and the integrated system.​
This presentation will provide an overview of the current status of the ADAPT project, highlighting the instrument design, scientific objectives, and recent advancements in front-end electronics development.

Speaker: Fabio Gargano (INFN, Bari (IT))

7:10 PM Spectral and timing analysis of bright pulsars with nine years of DAMPE data

The DArk Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) is a satellite-based experiment designed to detect charged cosmic rays and gamma rays. It surveys the gamma-ray sky in the energy range from approximately 2 GeV to 10 TeV. Using a new gamma-ray selection algorithm and taking advantage of DAMPE’s excellent energy resolution, we obtain high-precision energy spectra for bright pulsars. In this work, we also provide point-spread function (PSF)-weighted pulsar light curves, generated with an extended version of the PINT timing software, adapted to our analysis needs. Pulsar fluxes are derived using updated instrument response functions (IRFs), calculated to reflect the new selection algorithm. All results presented here are based on nine years of DAMPE flight data.

Speaker: Léonard Georges Théodore Lebrun

8:00 PM → 9:00 PM Dinner

Thu, July 24

9:00 AM → 9:30 AM Special Session on neutrino physics

9:00 AM The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE): Physics Program and Supporting Software

The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is a flagship international effort to advance our understanding of neutrino properties and probe for new physics. With its long-baseline configuration—spanning 1300 km from Fermilab to the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF)—DUNE is uniquely positioned to measure CP violation in the lepton sector, determine the neutrino mass ordering, and perform precision studies of neutrino oscillations. The experiment also offers sensitivity to a wide range of rare processes, including nucleon decay and neutrino signals from core-collapse supernovae.
DUNE will utilize a high-power, wide-band neutrino beam from Fermilab (1.2 MW, upgradeable to >2 MW), a sophisticated near detector complex for flux and interaction measurements, and a 70-kiloton total Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LArTPC) far detector system comprised of 4 modules deployed 1.5 km underground. Together, these systems enable both high-statistics and high-precision measurements essential to DUNE’s broad physics program.
This talk will provide an overview of the DUNE physics goals and highlight the software supporting detector simulation, event reconstruction, and data analysis. These developments are central to achieving DUNE’s precision goals as the experiment moves toward the construction and commissioning of its first far detector module.

Speaker: Mathew Muether

9:30 AM → 10:00 AM Cosmology, Astrophysics, Gravity, Mathematical Physics

9:30 AM Search for dark matter-related features in the Galactic gamma-ray energy spectra

Dark Matter (DM) particles in the Milky Way’s halo could self-annihilate or decay, producing Standard Model (SM) particles such as gamma rays. These processes may generate detectable excesses in the gamma-ray energy spectra observed at Earth. We search for such signatures using a sample of data collected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope in the energy range from 1 GeV to 1 TeV energy range in its first 15 years of operation. We employ a maximum likelihood fitting method with sliding energy windows to identify possible line-like spectral features. Our analysis targets five optimized regions of interest (RoIs), selected to enhance sensitivity to different theoretical DM distributions within the Milky Way’s halo, and incorporates a combined likelihood approach. Systematic uncertainties are constrained by using the Galactic Plane as a control region. Additionally, we explore possible box-shaped features that could arise if DM interactions in the halo involve long-lived mediators decaying into gamma-ray final states. Across both scenarios we find no statistically significant excesses. Consequently, we derive new and more stringent upper limits on the DM velocity-averaged annihilation cross section, surpassing previous constraints in the literature.

Speaker: Francesco Loparco (Universita e INFN, Bari (IT))

10:00 AM → 10:30 AM Special Session on Machine Learning

10:00 AM Deep Learning Approaches for Astroparticle Experiments: Calorimeter Classification and Track Reconstruction

The integration of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) techniques into astroparticle experiments marks a transformative step in both data analysis and experimental design. As space missions grow increasingly complex, the adoption of AI technologies becomes critical for optimizing performance and achieving robust scientific outcomes. In this context, we explore two innovative AI-driven approaches tailored for space-based calorimetric and tracking systems.

Firstly, we propose a fully custom-designed Transformer-based model for particle identification in space calorimeters. A key challenge in these experiments is the distinction between particle types, such as electrons and protons, based on energy deposition patterns. By capturing long-range dependencies across thousands of input channels, Transformers offer a powerful framework for robust classification. Our approach aims to enhance both the accuracy and reliability of particle identification, with the potential to extend classification capabilities across a wide energy spectrum, from 1 GeV to 100 TeV.

Secondly, we address the challenge of tracking in noisy environments by introducing a Graph Neural Network (GNN)-based solution. Tracking detectors in space are often affected by high levels of noise, including backscattering hits from the calorimeter and electronic noise, which complicate the reconstruction of primary particle trajectories. Leveraging the graph-based structure of tracking systems—where nodes represent energy deposits (hits) and edges encode their relationships—our GNN model performs node-level classification to distinguish signal hits from noise. This enables efficient and accurate reconstruction of the primary tracks and their parameters.

By addressing these complementary challenges in calorimetry and tracking, our work demonstrates the impact of state-of-the-art AI methodologies in advancing the capabilities of future space-based astroparticle experiments.

Speaker: Maria Bossa

10:30 AM → 11:00 AM Coffee break

11:00 AM → 11:50 AM Workshop on Astro-Cosmo-Gravity

Convener: Dr Andrea Pareti (Pavia University and INFN (IT))

11:00 AM New Frontier for Core-Collapse Supernovae physics with the upcoming Rubin-LSST survey

The Vera Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will revolutionize time-domain optical astronomy, detecting faint sources down to r~27.5 mag and generating nearly 32 trillion observations over 10 years. Among these, ~10 million will be supernovae (SNe), covering a wide range of redshifts. This unprecedented dataset will allow comprehensive characterization of every phase of supernova evolution—from pre-explosion variability to nebular nucleosynthesis —and represents a major breakthrough for multimessenger astronomy, offering unique opportunities for coordination with neutrino and gravitational wave detectors (LSST Collaboration, Abell, P. A., Allison, J., et al. 2009).

In this contribution I will focus on LSST’s ability to characterize CCSNe using a dataset of 6730 high-detail simulations of type II-P SNe from Moriya et al. 2023, analyzed with the CASTOR software (Simongini et al. 2024) to reconstruct the parametric map of each event. By comparing reconstructed and simulated parameters, we find that, in some cases, LSST data alone will not suffix entirely for fully constraining properties and explosion parameters due to limited spectral coverage, bolometric luminosity uncertainties, and redshift-absorption degeneracy. Follow-up observations, particularly in the infrared, will be essential for precise parameter determination.

This work has been accepted for publication at A&A

Speaker: Andrea Simongini

11:25 AM Massive black hole formation as a gravitational phase transition in compact gaseous clouds

The existence of gaseous proto-stellar clusters with initial gas mass from one to one hundred million solar masses, and high temperature, primarily composed of atomic hydrogen at the epoch of reionization is strongly supported by cosmological, astrophysical, and recent direct observational evidence. Such systems form from the collapse of a respective compact massive cloud. We consider the possibility of direct formation of a central massive black hole halting the initial collapse. We assume a two component system consisting of a central black hole accreting gas at a steady isotropic state and a gaseous hydrostatic isothermal envelope exceeding to the virial radius of such a massive cloud. We study the thermodynamic equilibria of this system and identify phase transitions from a gaseous phase to a centrally condensed state of a massive black hole with a diluted gaseous atmosphere.

Speaker: Zacharias Roupas (Physics department, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy)

11:50 AM → 12:40 PM High Energy Particle Physics

Convener: Dr Andrea Pareti (Pavia University and INFN (IT))

11:50 AM Muon Detector (CMS)

The CMS muon system comprises four complementary and redundant detector technologies, designed to ensure robust operational performance and to deliver high-precision muon reconstruction and efficient triggering. During Run 3, CMS is acquiring proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of 13.6 TeV, with an instantaneous luminosity exceeding 2×10$^{34}$ cm$^{−2}$s$^{−1}$, as delivered by the LHC. Concurrently, the CMS Collaboration is actively engaged in preparing the muon system for the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) era. The associated upgrade program is already underway and is scheduled to continue through Long Shutdown 3 (LS3). Upon completion, the upgraded muon system will be capable of sustaining operation under instantaneous luminosities of 5–7×10$^{34}$ cm$^{−2}$s$^{−1}$, and will support data-taking corresponding to an integrated luminosity in the range of 3500–4000 fb$^{−1}$. This contributions provides a summary of the CMS muon system performance during Run 3, followed by an overview of the ongoing and planned upgrade activities.

Speaker: Ilaria Vai (Pavia University and INFN (IT))

12:15 PM Performance of the ATLAS Muon Spectrometer Detectors during Run3 data taking

With the conclusion of proton-proton collision data-taking in 2024, the ATLAS experiment has now integrated a luminosity exceeding 180 fb^{-1} during the Run 3 period, which began in July 2022 following Long Shutdown 2 (LS2). During LS2, a series of detector upgrades were implemented, including the installation of the New Small Wheel (NSW), a major upgrade that involved replacing the innermost stations of the Muon Spectrometer endcaps.
The ATLAS Muon Spectrometer, the largest muon system ever built at colliders, now comprises both legacy gaseous detectors—Monitored Drift Tubes (MDT), Thin Gap Chambers (TGC), and Resistive Plate Chambers (RPC)—which have been in operation for over 15 years, as well as newer technologies like Micromegas and small-strip TGCs in the NSW. These new systems are now in stable operation following an extensive phase of construction and commissioning, providing enhanced muon tracking and trigger capabilities.
This presentation will cover the performance of the Muon system, focusing on the stability of the legacy detectors over time, their ability to handle increasing luminosity and associated irradiation levels, and studies on detector ageing. Emphasis will be placed on the NSW upgrade, including the strategies adopted for alignment, track reconstruction, and trigger.

Speakers: Arisa Wada (Nagoya University (JP)), Arisa Wada

12:40 PM → 1:05 PM Special Session on neutrino physics

Convener: Dr Andrea Pareti (Pavia University and INFN (IT))

12:40 PM Neutrinos and Dark Matter: Detector Technologies and Geometric Insights in Cosmic Exploration

Neutrinos and dark matter dominate the invisible universe, representing fundamental challenges in modern physics. This review examines advanced detector technologies and methodologies driving progress in understanding these elusive components, with emphasis on cosmological significance and synergies uniting particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology.
The field of neutrino physics now achieves unprecedented precision through large-scale detector systems. Neutrino oscillation parameter quantification advances through reactor-based installations exemplified by JUNO, while long-baseline accelerator facilities including DUNE resolve CP-violation phases and mass hierarchy configurations. Extreme-environment astrophysical neutrino detection operates via IceCube and KM3NeT observatory networks. Complementary methodologies - notably KATRIN's tritium β-decay spectroscopy and Project 8's cyclotron radiation detection - progressively constrain the absolute neutrino mass parameter, critically impacting cosmological tension resolution such as Hubble constant discrepancies.
Indirect detection methodologies employ space-based instrumentation including Fermi-LAT, AMS-02, and JWST to identify dark matter annihilation signatures across electromagnetic bands. Theoretical frameworks propose geometric reformulations of dark matter distributions - from hyperbolic halo density profiles to torsion-modified spacetime metrics - addressing persistent anomalies like the galactic core-cusp problem within U(1)'-symmetric dark sectors.
Multi messenger astrophysics exploits emergent observational synergies through spatiotemporal correlations between IceCube neutrino events and LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA gravitational wave signatures, augmented by Vera Rubin Observatory's weak gravitational lensing surveys. These convergences potentially elucidate dark matter-neutrino coupling mechanisms within compact binary merger environments. Next-generation facilities (DARWIN, IceCube-Gen2, ARIA) target zeptobarn-scale sensitivity via:
- Advanced photodetection and charge-readout systems
- Scalable architectures inspired by GridPix technology
- Machine learning-driven signal discrimination
-Paleo-detectors utilizing mineral inclusions for multi-gigayear neutrino flux reconstruction

This review synthesizes how experimental advances—from kiloton-scale neutrino detectors to ultra-low-background chambers—are elucidating the invisible universe, charting a trajectory at the intersection of fundamental physics and cosmic discovery.

Speaker: Dr Ilham El Atmani (Hassan II University of Casablanca, Faculty of Sciences Ain Chock, High Energy Physics & Condensed Matter Laboratory (PHEMAC))

1:05 PM → 2:05 PM Lunch

2:05 PM → 4:30 PM Break

4:30 PM → 5:00 PM Coffee break

5:00 PM → 6:45 PM High Energy Particle Physics

Convener: Prof. Mathew Muether

5:00 PM Recent results on EW physics at LHCb

The Electroweak sector of the Standard Model is currently being scrutinized with a extraordinary level of detail. Many of the Electroweak and QCD processes can be computed nowadays at several orders in perturbation theory, reaching an unprecedented precision. Thanks to the increasing sizes of the data samples collected at LHCb, together with the developments on the theory side, it is possible to perform high precision measurements that push the boundaries of our understanding of fundamental interactions. The LHCb detector offers unique capabilities in order to perform high precision measurements of QCD and EW observables in the high pseudorapidity region at the LHC. In this environment, certain quantities, like the weak-mixing angle, are less affected by uncertainties from the parton distribution functions, and the more simple geometry of the detector facilitates the evaluation of experimental biases. The LHCb coverage also provides the opportunity to constrain theory uncertainties when combining the measurements with the other experiments at the LHC, allowing to obtain an almost full coverage of the proton-proton interactions.
In this talk, the most recent results of EW measurements performed at LHCb will be covered, with a special dedication to the latest Z boson mass result, the study of the effective weak-mixing angle and the measurement of the W boson mass. In addition, prospects for the analysis of the full Run 2 data sample will be shown as well as the expectations for the analysis of the Run 3 data, which have the potential to beat previous experiments and reach uncertainties smaller than those of the current global EW fit.

Speaker: Menglin Xu (CERN)

5:30 PM New measurement of $K^{+} \rightarrow \pi^{+}\nu\bar{\nu}$ branching ratio at the NA62 experiment

The $K^{+}\rightarrow\pi^{+}\nu\bar{\nu}$ decay is a golden mode for flavour physics. Its branching ratio is predicted with high precision by the Standard Model to be less than $10^{-10}$, and this decay mode is highly sensitive to indirect effects of new physics up to the highest mass scales. A new measurement of the $K^{+}\rightarrow\pi^{+}\nu\bar{\nu}$ decay by the NA62 experiment at the CERN SPS is presented, using data collected in 2021 and 2022. This new dataset was collected after modifications to the beamline and detectors and at a higher instantaneous beam intensity with respect to the previous 2016-2018 data taking. Using the NA62 datasets from 2016-2022, a new measurement of $\mathcal{B} (K^{+}\rightarrow\pi^{+}\nu\bar{\nu}) = \left(13.0^{+ 3.3}_{- 2.9} \right)\times 10^{-11} $ is reported, and for the first time the $K^{+}\rightarrow\pi^{+}\nu\bar{\nu}$ decay is observed with a significance exceeding $5\sigma$.

Speaker: Ilaria Panichi (Universita e INFN, Firenze (IT))

5:55 PM Highlights from the PHENIX Spin Program

From 2000 to 2016, the PHENIX experiment operated at Brookhaven's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, recording large sets of polarized proton-proton and proton-nucleus collisions. Through a wide variety of observables, including W bosons, direct photons, light mesons, and open heavy flavor final states, these data sets continue to offer insights into the spin structure of the proton: Transverse asymmetries probe the spin-momentum correlations of partons, while longitudinal asymmetries probe the polarization of those partons. Double spin asymmetries of various processes are sensitive to gluons at leading order. I will provide an overview of the detector, review recent results and ongoing analyses in longitudinal and transverse asymmetries, and discuss the impact these measurements have on our understanding of parton polarizations and correlations within the proton.

Speaker: Ross Corliss

6:20 PM Quarkonium production at RHIC

Quarkonium production serves as an important probe for understanding the properties of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) created in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. At the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), the STAR and PHENIX experiments have conducted extensive measurements of charmonium (J/ψ) and bottomonium (Υ) states in both proton-proton (p+p) and heavy-ion collisions. These studies provide key insights into color screening effects, parton energy loss, and quarkonium regeneration mechanisms in the QGP.

This talk will present recent results on J/ψ and Υ production from STAR,PHENIX and sPHENIX experiments, including transverse momentum and rapidity dependencies, nuclear modification factors (RAA), and elliptic flow (v₂). Comparisons between p+p and heavy-ion collisions highlight the interplay between initial-state effects, cold nuclear matter contributions, and QGP-induced modifications. Outlook of future results will be as well discussed.

Speaker: Jaroslav Bielcik (Czech Technical University in Prague (CZ))

6:45 PM → 8:00 PM ML School

Convener: Prof. Pietro Vischia (Universidad de Oviedo and Instituto de Ciencias y Tecnologías Espaciales de Asturias (ICTEA))

8:00 PM → 9:00 PM Dinner

Fri, July 25

9:00 AM → 10:30 AM Special Session on Quantum Information and Quantum Optics

9:00 AM Homomorphic Evaluation of the Quantum Fourier Transform with a hint from Black-Hole Physics

Imagine handing a sealed box to someone, asking them to perform the quantum Fourier transform (QFT)—the heart of many quantum algorithms—and then returning the box to you without ever peeking inside. We show that this can be done with almost no extra cost or communication. The trick has two layers:

1. Quantum cloak. Before sending the state, the client scrambles it with a randomly chosen Pauli operator (a “quantum one-time pad”). To anyone who lacks the key, the qubits look completely thermal.

2. Classical bookkeeping. The two numbers that specify that Pauli mask are hidden in ordinary RSA ciphertexts—a public-key code. Although the server never learns the key, the very structure of the QFT causes the hidden mask to evolve linearly as the circuit runs. Linear evolution is precisely what RSA can update blindly: the server just multiplies the two ciphertexts by known constants after each gate while applying the usual QFT operations on the qubits.

Because the Fourier network is built entirely from Clifford gates, the procedure needs no exotic resources: no interaction, no “magic states,” and no heavyweight lattice cryptography. The server expends the same O((log N)^2) gate count it would on an unprotected register, while the client finishes with a single RSA inversion and one Pauli correction.

The result offers a fresh perspective on a long-standing puzzle in fundamental physics. If black holes process infalling matter through unitary dynamics that are effectively Clifford-only, their outgoing Hawking radiation would look maximally mixed to an external observer—exactly as we see—while still encoding the interior computation behind a quantum one-time pad. In that picture the event horizon acts as the untrusted server, matter fields supply the data, and spacetime itself provides the passive RSA-like bookkeeping that lets the hidden key propagate coherently. What appears to be random noise could therefore be the ciphertext of a vast homomorphic computation, preserving unitarity without revealing the underlying information.

Speakers: Avishy Carmi, Eliahu Cohen (Bar-Ilan University)

9:30 AM The problem of time and recent approaches to address it

Speaker: Eliahu Cohen (Bar-Ilan University)

10:00 AM Temporal photonics for the quantum era

The temporal degree of freedom of photons is a powerful resource for encoding and transmitting information across a broad range of applications, including high-speed optical telecommunications, light-based diagnostics, remote sensing, and spectroscopy, in both classical and quantum domains. To harness the full potential of this temporal dimension, we require methods capable of user-defined manipulation of photonic temporal profiles, operating at light-speed and with high energy efficiency.

This talk will present an overview of temporal optics for information processing, with a particular focus on a universal framework known as energy-redistribution photonic processing. Based on energy-preserving phase-only linear manipulations, this framework enables highly efficient, customized control of the temporal structure of light. As such, it supports a wide variety of functions for both classical and quantum light, such as time/frequency scaling, passive amplification, lossless logic operations, and joint time-frequency analysis. Notably, this approach can be practically implemented using widely available fiber-optics and integrated photonic devices.

We will illustrate the core principles of this framework through a methodology specifically designed to recover photonic information severely degraded by noise, a problem of broad fundamental and practical importance. Particular emphasis will be placed on the denoising and regeneration of time-energy entangled states through passive coherent energy enhancement, representing a key enabling capability for future quantum communication, sensing, and computing technologies.

Speaker: Jose Azana

10:30 AM → 11:00 AM Coffee break

11:00 AM → 11:25 AM High Energy Particle Physics

11:00 AM Latest Results from the ICARUS Experiment at the Short-Baseline Neutrino Program

The ICARUS Collaboration is now entering its fifth year of continuing operations of the 760-ton liquid argon T600 detector. The T600 was overhauled at CERN after operations at the LNGS underground laboratory in Italy and moved to its present location at FNAL - as part of the Short-Baseline Neutrino (SBN) program - where it successfully completed its commissioning phase in June 2022. At FNAL ICARUS collects neutrino interactions from both the Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB) and off-axis from the Main Injector Neutrino beam (NuMI). To date, ICARUS has accumulated approximately $6.4·10^{20}$ protons on target (POT) with the BNB and about $6.2·10^{20}$ POT with NuMI. Within the SBN program ICARUS will search for evidence of short-baseline oscillations, potentially explained by eV-scale sterile neutrinos, jointly with the Short-Baseline Near Detector (SBND). In addition, ICARUS is performing stand-along oscillation searches in disappearance mode and measuring neutrino cross sections on argon with both the BNB and NuMI beams. It is also performing searches for additional Beyond the Standard Model signatures. Preliminary results from the ICARUS experiment, using data from the BNB and NuMI neutrino beams, will be presented.

Speaker: Alessandro Maria Ricci

11:25 AM → 12:40 PM Heavy Ion Collisions and Critical Phenomena

11:25 AM Further development of HYDJET++ model

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Speaker: Evgeny Zabrodin

11:50 AM New results on direct photon yield and flow in 200GeV Au+Au collisions

Direct photons produced in heavy ion collisions are penetrating probes and as such encode the entire space-time history of the collision, from the initial hard scattering to the final kinetic freeze-out, but their description is a major challenge to theoretical models, particularly to those that concentrate mostly on thermal radiation from the quark-gluon plasma and the hadron gas. Simultaneous observation of large yields and large azimuthal asymmetries (elliptic flow) by PHENIX has so far not been reproduced quantitatively, a situation dubbed "direct photon puzzle". Using the 2014 200 GeV Au+Au data, which has ten times the statistics of earlier published results, and employing one single analysis technique over a broad transverse momentum range of 0.8 - 10 GeV/c, PHENIX re-measured both the direct and nonprompt photon yields and the direct photon elliptic flow in finer centrality bins than previously published. Comparisons to recent models indicate that inclusion of novel mechanisms like magnetic emission and radiative hadronization might help resolve the direct photon puzzle.

Speaker: Melinda Orosz (University of Debrecen (HU))

12:15 PM Recent Results from Heavy-Ion Collisions with ATLAS

This talk presents an overview of recent findings from the ATLAS experiment using heavy-ion collisions. These include measurements of how energetic jets are produced and modified as they travel through the hot, dense medium known as the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP), which is created in collisions between atomic nuclei at near light speed. The results also include studies of softer particles emerging from the collisions, which help reveal the collective behavior and properties of the QGP. In addition, the talk will cover the latest results from ultra-peripheral collisions (UPC), where the nuclei pass close to each other without directly colliding but still interact via their intense electromagnetic fields. These rare events allow the study of photo-nuclear and photon-photon processes. Photo-nuclear interactions provide insights into the structure of atomic nuclei, similar to deep inelastic scattering, while photon-photon interactions are used to probe the electromagnetic properties of the tau lepton, search for exotic particles like magnetic monopoles, and explore possible physics beyond the Standard Model.

Speaker: Malak Ait Tamlihat (Mohammed V University in Rabat)

1:05 PM → 2:05 PM Lunch

2:05 PM → 3:00 PM Coffee break

3:00 PM → 8:00 PM Chania excursion

Sat, July 26

9:00 AM → 6:00 PM FREE DAY

Sun, July 27

7:00 AM → 5:00 PM Conference excursion

Mon, July 28

9:00 AM → 10:00 AM High Energy Particle Physics

9:00 AM CMS Highlights

CMS Highlights

Speaker: Chen Zhou (Peking University (CN))

9:30 AM LHCb overview

LHCb is a single-armed spectrometer at the Large Hadron Collider dedicated to the heavy flavour physics study. Recent physics highlights will be reported, including results on CP violation, gamma measurements, rare decays and hadron spectroscopy. The upgraded LHCb detector has been efficiently taking data, and the performance will be briefly discussed.

Speaker: Prof. Yanxi Zhang (Peking University (CN))

10:00 AM → 10:30 AM Special Session on Machine Learning

10:00 AM Machine Learning–Based Real-Time Data Processing and Hardware Deployment in JUNO experiment

In current-generation particle detectors, traditional backend data processing is increasingly migrating toward front-end electronics. This shift enables earlier event selection and real-time signal processing within the data acquisition chain, reducing bandwidth and improving system responsiveness. In large-scale neutrino experiments, identifying low-energy events is particularly difficult due to weak signal amplitudes and overlap with dark noise, requiring early-stage processing systems with effective background suppression and resource-efficient implementation. This work investigates how machine learning methods can be adapted to address potential future requirements on latency, power efficiency, and hardware compatibility in this context.

This work investigates the feasibility of applying machine learning techniques to enhance the online processing of low-energy events—not only for L1 trigger decisions but also for signal identification at the data acquisition (DAQ) and preprocessing stages. We present a comprehensive comparison of three deployment strategies: high-level synthesis using hls4ml on FPGAs, manual RTL implementation (Verilog), and inference execution on Deep Learning Processing Units (DPUs). These approaches are evaluated in terms of resource usage, response latency, and system integration trade-offs.

Training datasets were constructed using simulated events from the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) SNiPER framework, including both low-energy electron signals and PMT dark noise. Models were trained on a conventional CPU-based system and deployed on Jetson Nano, Kintex-7 FPGA, and Virtex-7 FPGA hardware for evaluation, assessing their adaptability and performance across platforms with varying computational capacity.

This study proposes a machine-learning-driven data processing framework tailored to future neutrino experiments, providing practical deployment insights for building high-performance, low-power, and scalable real-time systems.

Speaker: Feng Gao (iihe, ULB)

10:30 AM → 11:00 AM Coffee break

11:00 AM → 11:25 AM Cosmology, Astrophysics, Gravity, Mathematical Physics

11:00 AM The SABRE South Experiment at the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory

SABRE is an international collaboration that will operate similar particle de-
tectors in the Northern (SABRE North) and Southern Hemispheres (SABRE
South). This innovative approach distinguishes possible dark matter signals
from seasonal backgrounds, a pioneering strategy only possible with a southern
hemisphere experiment. SABRE South is located at the Stawell Underground
Physics Laboratory (SUPL), in regional Victoria, Australia.
SUPL is a newly built facility located 1024 m underground (∼2900 m water
equivalent) within the Stawell Gold Mine and its construction has been com-
pleted in 2023.
SABRE South employs ultra-high purity NaI(Tl) crystals immersed in a Linear
Alkyl Benzene (LAB) based liquid scintillator veto, enveloped by passive steel
and polyethylene shielding alongside a plastic scintillator muon veto. Signifi-
cant progress has been made in the procurement, testing, and preparation of
equipment for installation of SABRE South. The SABRE South muon detector
and the data acquisition systems are actively collecting data at SUPL and the
SABRE South’s commissioning is planned to be completed by the end of 2025.
This presentation will provide an update on the overall progress of the SABRE
South construction, its anticipated performance, and its potential physics reach.

Speaker: Dr Irene Bolognino (The University of Adelaide)

11:25 AM → 12:55 PM High Energy Particle Physics

11:25 AM Recent progress on charmed meson decays at BESIII

BESIII has collected 20.3 and 7.33 $fb^{-1}$ of e+e- collision data samples at 3.773 and 4.128-4.226 GeV, which provide the largest dataset of $D\bar{D}$ and $D_sD_s$ pairs in the world, respectively.
We will present the measurement of branching fractions of fifteen $D_s$ hadronic decays using a global fit and highlight our recent advancements in amplitude analyses of $D^+ \to K_s \pi^+ \eta$, $D \to \pi \pi \eta$, $D_s^+ \to \pi^+ \pi^+ \pi^- \pi^0$, and $D_s^+ \to \pi^+ \pi^+ \pi^-\pi^0 \pi^0$. In these amplitude analyses, we observe the $D^+ \to K_s a_0(980)^+$, $D \to a_0(980) \pi$, and $D_s^+ \to \omega \rho^+$ decays, along with deviations in the branching fractions of $\phi$ decays from the PDG average.
As for the (semi)-leptonic decays, we will present the first experimental study of $D_{(s)}^{*+} \to l+ \nu$ and the improved measurements of |Vcd|, |Vcs|, $D_s^+/D^+$ decay constant in $D_s^+/D^+ \to \mu^+ \nu$ and $\tau^+ \nu$. Furthermore, we will provide a comprehensive overview of the most precise experimental results for $D_{(s)} \to K$, $D \to \pi$, and $D_s \to \eta^{(‘)}$ transition form factors. We have also investigated scalar ($a_0$, $f_0$, $\sigma$), vector ($K^*$, $\phi$), axial vector ($K_1$, $b_1$) particles on the hadron spectrum of $D_{(s)}\to hh l^+ \nu$ and $hhh l^+ \nu$. The experimental studies of $D \to a_0(980)$, $D \to \sigma$, $D \to K^*$, $D_s \to f_0(980)$, and $D_s \to \phi$ form factors will also be presented.

Speaker: Xu Yingchao

11:55 AM Recent highlights from Belle and Belle II

The Belle and Belle~II experiments have collected a 1.4 ab$^{-1}$ sample of $e^+ e^-$ collisions at a centre-of-mass energies near the $\Upsilon(4S)$ resonance. These data allow precision measurements of $B$-meson, charm-hadron, and tau-lepton decays. In addition, we perform searches for light dark sector particles. We present recent highlights that include flavour-changing neutral current decays of $B$ mesons, measurements of direct $CP\!$ violation in charm, and searches for lepton-flavour-violating process and light dark-matter candidates.

Speaker: Mario Merola (University of Napoli Federico II and INFN - National Institute for Nuclear Physics)

12:25 PM Recent results on CP violation in baryon decays at LHCb

The first observation of CP violation (CPV) in baryon decays by the LHCb experiment marks a significant milestone, underscoring the expanding scope and importance of CP violation studies. The LHCb experiment, designed to study CP violation in particles containing b quarks, has collected an unprecedented dataset, offering a unique opportunity to probe CP asymmetries in baryon decays. This talk will present the latest LHCb results on CPV in baryon decays, with a focus on charmless beauty decays, discussing their implications and prospects for future measurements.

Speaker: Tianze Rong (School of Physics State Key Laboratory of Nuclear Physics and Technology, Peking University, Beijing)

1:00 PM → 2:00 PM Lunch

2:00 PM → 4:30 PM Break

4:30 PM → 5:00 PM Coffee break

5:00 PM → 5:50 PM High Energy Particle Physics

5:00 PM Phase-2 Upgrade of the ATLAS Inner Tracker

The ATLAS experiment is currently preparing for an upgrade of the Inner Tracking for High-Luminosity LHC operation, scheduled to start in 2030. The radiation damage at the maximum integrated luminosity of 4000/fb implies integrated hadron fluencies over 2x1016neq/cm2 and tracking in a very dense environment call for a replacement of the existing Inner Detector. An all-silicon Inner Tracker (ITk) is proposed with a pixel detector surrounded by a strip detector. After an extensive prototyping phase, all the institutes involved in the ITk are currently in pre-production phase, moving toward production mode. In this contribution we present the design of the ITk Detector and its expected performance. An overview of the current status of the various detector components, both pixel, strip and the other common items, focusing on the preparation for production, with its more challenging aspects, will be summarized.

Speaker: Marianna Testa (INFN e Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati (IT))

5:25 PM Upgrade of the ATLAS Tile Calorimeter for High-Luminosity LHC

The Tile Calorimeter (TileCal) is a sampling hadronic calorimeter covering the central region of the ATLAS experiment, with steel as absorber and plastic scintillators as active medium. The High-Luminosity phase of LHC, delivering 5 to 7.5 times the LHC nominal instantaneous luminosity, is expected to begin in 2030. TileCal will require new electronics to meet the requirements of a 1 MHz trigger, higher ambient radiation, and to ensure better performance under high pile-up conditions. Both the on- and off-detector TileCal electronics will be replaced during the shutdown of 2026-2030. PMT signals from every TileCal cell will be digitized and sent directly to the back-end electronics, where the signals are reconstructed, stored, and sent to the first level of trigger at a rate of 40 MHz. This will provide better precision of the calorimeter signals used by the trigger system and will allow the development of more complex trigger algorithms. The modular front-end electronics feature radiation-tolerant commercial off-the-shelf components and redundant design to minimise single points of failure. The timing, control and communication interface with the off-detector electronics is implemented with modern Field Programmable Gate Arrays and high speed fibre optic links running up to 9.6 Gb/s. The TileCal upgrade program has included extensive R&D and test beam studies. A Demonstrator module with reverse compatibility with the existing system was inserted in ATLAS in July 2019 for operating in actual detector conditions. The ongoing developments for on- and off-detector systems, together with expected performance characteristics and results of test-beam campaigns with the electronics prototypes will be discussed.

Speaker: Arya Aikot (Univ. of Valencia and CSIC (ES))

5:00 PM → 5:50 PM Session on Other topics and interdisciplinary topics

5:00 PM The FragmentatiOn Of Target experiment: recent results.

FOOT (FragmentatiOn Of Target) represents an innovative experiment in applied nuclear physics, dedicated to comprehensively understanding nuclear fragmentation processes crucial in oncological treatments with hadron beams and in the field of Radiation Protection in deep Space. Our physics program foresees a comprehensive set of measurements conducted in both direct and inverse kinematics, employing particle beams and targets similar to the composition of human tissues from one side and spacecraft shielding materials on the other.
The primary objective of this experiment is to measure double differential cross-sections as a function of scattering angle and fragment energy within the 100-800 MeV/u range, achieving a precision level exceeding 5%. Currently, the FOOT Collaboration has developed two experimental set-ups: one based on nuclear emulsions devoted to charges $Z \lt 4$ and another based on electronic detectors for fragments with $Z \ge 2$.
This presentation will provide an overview of the experiment's current status, preliminary and recent results obtained with oxygen beams at GSI, and details on the upcoming experimental campaigns.

Speaker: Mauro Villa (Universita e INFN, Bologna (IT))

5:25 PM Fluctuation-Dissipation Breakdown in a Phase Oscillator Model of the Fruit Fly Connectome

Non-equilibrium systems can be identified by violations of the fluctuation-dissipation relation, as shown in [1, 2]. Recent studies in neural systems [3, 4] have linked such violations to asymmetric interactions, using both empirical brain data and whole-brain models. These systems often display dynamical scaling, even when far from criticality [5]. Criticality, commonly emerging at second-order phase transitions, enhances adaptability and functionality in complex systems.

We investigate the distance from equilibrium in the Shinomoto-Kuramoto model by measuring fluctuation-dissipation violations under varying edge weight anisotropies. This is done by solving phase oscillator dynamics on raw, homeostatic, and randomized inhibitory versions of a fully reconstructed fruit-fly connectome [6], near synchronization transition points. By analyzing auto-correlations and response functions to small perturbations, we compute fluctuation-dissipation ratios across conditions. These ratios deviate from the constant values expected at equilibrium, with deviations tracking the degree of anisotropy.

[1] L. F. Cugliandolo, D. S. Dean, and J. Kurchan, Phys. Rev. Lett. 79, 2168 (1997), URL https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.79.2168.
[2] U. M. B. Marconi, A. Puglisi, L. Rondoni, and A. Vulpiani, Physics Reports 461, 111 (2008), ISSN 0370-1573.
[3] G. Deco, C. W. Lynn, Y. Sanz Perl, and M. L. Kringel bach, Phys. Rev. E 108, 064410 (2023), URL https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevE.108.064410.
[4] J. M. Monti, Y. S. Perl, E. Tagliazucchi, M. Kringelbach, and G. Deco, bioRxiv (2024), URL https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.04.04.588056.
[5] M. Henkel and M. Pleimling, Non-Equilibrium Phase Transitions: Volume 2: Ageing and Dynamical Scaling Far from Equilibrium, Theoretical and Mathematical Physics (Springer Netherlands, 2011), ISBN 9789048128693, URL https://books.google.hu/books?id=AiofeEteLVcC.
[6] Sven Dorkenwald, Arie Matsliah, Amy R Sterling, et al. Neuronal wiring diagram of an adult brain. bioRxiv, 2023.

Speaker: Dr Istvan Papp

5:00 PM → 6:15 PM Workshop on Instruments and Methods

5:00 PM Test beam characterization of pixel modules for the ATLAS Inner Tracker Upgrade

The current ATLAS Inner Detector (ID) is unable to efficiently handle the increased event rate and radiation dose expected at the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC). To address this challenge, the ID will be entirely replaced with the all-silicon Inner Tracker (ITk), designed to provide superior tracking performance in the demanding HL-LHC environment. The ITk Pixel Detector, positioned in the innermost part of the ITk, will feature two types of modules: triplet modules with radiation-hard 3D sensors in the innermost layer (L0), where fluences up to $2 \times 10^{16} \, n_{\text{eq}} / \text{cm}^2$ are expected, and quad modules with planar n-in-p sensors 100 μm thick in the second layer (L1) and 150 μm in the outer layers (L2–L4).
Test beam characterization is integral to the qualification of modules for the ITk Pixel Detector, providing valuable insights into the performance of various sensor designs under different conditions and contributing to the finalization and refinement of the detector designs. A broad range of pre-production modules – including those equipped with the latest readout chips (ITkPixV2), produced by various vendors and featuring different sensor technologies and designs – is being tested in test beams both before and after irradiation. The collected data have been reconstructed and analyzed to evaluate key performance metrics of the pixel detectors, such as hit efficiency, spatial resolution, and its reliability.
This talk presents updates from the recent 2024/2025 test beam campaigns, highlighting several important developments. Notably, data were collected for the first time from triplet modules featuring 3D sensors from FBK (Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy), assembled with the ITkPixV2 readout chip, marking the first test of this configuration under test beam conditions. 3D sensors from SINTEF (Norway) irradiated to fluences up to $1.7 \times 10^{16} \, n_{\text{eq}} / \text{cm}^2$ and produced with a new passivation process, demonstrated strong performance, achieving over 96% average efficiency at approximately 70 V bias and up to 98% at 100 V. These results align with those from the original design sensors and confirm that the new passivation provides comparable radiation hardness. Additionally, two FBK thin planar modules, irradiated to $0.5 \times 10^{16} \, n_{\text{eq}} / \text{cm}^2$, have been remeasured to improve data quality. By carefully resetting and reapplying noise masks at each bias point, the number of masked pixels was significantly reduced, enabling stable operation across bias voltages. A high hit efficiency of approximately 99% was achieved at a moderate bias of around 220 V, confirming the suitability of these sensors for ITk requirements.

Speaker: Dmytro Hohov (Université Paris-Saclay (FR))

5:25 PM The DUNE Far Detector Photon Detection System

The DUNE Far Detector (FD) employs the Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LArTPC) detector technology: charged particles traveling through the detector ionize liquid argon and, thanks to the collection of the resulting ionization charges, 3D tracks can be reconstructed. The event time, and position of the track in the detector volume, is obtained detecting the scintillation light caused by the recombination of part of the ionization charges. In fact, liquid argon is an excellent scintillator, despite the VUV wavelength range (128nm) of the emitted photons makes their detection challenging. The Photon Detection System (PDS) is responsible for the detection of liquid argon scintillation light in the DUNE FD. The PDS is based on the X-Arapuca, a light trapping device capable of instrumenting large photon collection surfaces with a limited amount of active photosensors (SiPM), placed along its edges. The trapping effect is obtained using wavelength-shifting and reflective materials.
In this talk, it is described the X-Arapuca implementation in the DUNE FD. Measurement results are also reported, in particular from the efficiency measurements performed in the collaboration laboratories, and from the ProtoDUNE-HD run.

Speaker: Luca Meazza (Universita & INFN, Milano-Bicocca (IT))

5:50 PM Assessing long-term performance of eco-friendly RPCs

Resistive Plate Chamber detectors in HEP are usually operated in avalanche mode, with a high-performance high-GWP gas mixture based on C2H2F4 and SF6.

The RPC ECOGas@GIF++ Collaboration is carrying on an intense R&D activity devoted to search for new eco-friendly gas mixtures for RPCs, complying with recent European regulations, and assessing their performance in different irradiation conditions on a long-term time scale.

Different Resistive Plate Chambers, flushed with a HFO 1234ze-CO2 based gas mixture, have been exposed to high particle rates at the CERN Gamma Irradiation Facility (GIF++). During a 3 years-long ageing campaign, they have integrated O(100 mC/cm2) and have been systematically subjected to performance evaluation by dedicated beam tests in order to study possible effects of ageing.

In this talk, results on these studies together with their future perspectives will be presented.

Speaker: Liliana Congedo (Universita e INFN, Bari (IT))

5:50 PM → 6:15 PM Cosmology, Astrophysics, Gravity, Mathematical Physics

5:50 PM Review of requirements and possible solutions for the Input Mode Cleaner of the Einstein Telescope Interferometers

Third-generation ground-based gravitational-wave detectors promise a transformative leap in sensitivity, unlocking the ability to detect signals from the Universe's earliest epochs. Meeting these ambitious goals requires overcoming numerous noise sources, both technical and fundamental, with laser frequency noise emerging as a critical challenge. Suppression of this noise must go far beyond the achievements of second-generation detectors, demanding a rethinking of stabilization strategies.
In current interferometers, frequency noise suppression relies on a combination of a suspended Input Mode Cleaner (IMC) cavity, a rigid Reference Cavity to manage low Fourier-frequency noise during lock acquisition of kilometer-scale arm cavities, and feedback from the common-arm degree of freedom of the Interferometer. However, in third-generation detectors, the much lower cavity pole of the arm cavities renders the common-arm reference impractical, necessitating a fundamental rethinking of the frequency stabilization strategy.
The next-generation IMC must assume a far more demanding role of frequency reference over an extended bandwidth, requiring exceptional stability across the entire control-loop bandwidth. This shift introduces big challenges, including stricter requirements for seismic isolation, suppression of thermal and radiation pressure noise on the cavity mirrors, and mitigation of thermal coating effects. Furthermore, achieving the requisite signal-to-noise ratio for precise frequency noise sensing calls for innovative approaches in sensing and feedback control design.
Aim of the talk is to present these new problems and the state of the art preliminary solutions devised by the community.

Speaker: Antonino Chiummo

5:50 PM → 6:15 PM High Energy Particle Physics

5:50 PM Multi-Peripheral Models as a Fingerprint for High-Energy Physics

High‐energy scattering typically requires resummation of large energy logarithms, which can undermine fixed‐order QCD predictions. The BFKL formalism provides a standard momentum‐space framework for this resummation. We investigate proton–proton collisions featuring a forward jet, a backward jet, and multiple central mini‐jets, using tailored observables—particularly jet rapidity distributions—to highlight BFKL related effects. Fixed‐order PYTHIA8 simulations are contrasted with BFKL‐resummed predictions from the BFKLex Monte Carlo code.

Speaker: Mr Dario Vaccaro (Laboratório de Instrumentação e Física Experimental de Partículas (LIP))

6:15 PM → 6:40 PM High Energy Particle Physics

6:15 PM Higher-order QED radiative corrections in HEP: the status and prospects

The status of calculations of QED radiative corrections to processes studied in high-precision modern and future experiments is discussed. Requirements on the accuracy of theoretical predictions for experiments at future electron-positron colliders are estimated. Methods of higher-order QED radiative correction calculations are described. Recent results on corrections to processes of electron-positron annihilations and muon decay are presented.

Speaker: Andrej Arbuzov (Joint Institute for Nuclear Research)

6:15 PM → 6:45 PM Special Session on neutrino physics

6:15 PM Latest NOvA Oscillation Results from 10 Years of Data

NOvA is a long-baseline, accelerator-based neutrino oscillation experiment, optimized for electron neutrino measurements. It utilizes the upgraded, Megawatt-capable NuMI beam from Fermilab to measure electron-neutrino appearance and muon-neutrino disappearance at its Far Detector in Ash River, Minnesota. NOvA's goals include resolving the neutrino mass hierarchy problem, constraining the CP-violating phase, and determining the octant of theta23. This talk will present the latest results on muon (anti-)neutrino disappearance and electron (anti-)neutrino appearance from NOvA. These measurements are based on 10 years of NOvA data collected between 2013 and 2023. The new NOvA results suggest a preference for the normal mass hierarchy with a credence level of 87%.

Speaker: Prof. Jianming Bian (University of California Irvine (US))

6:15 PM → 6:40 PM Workshop on Laser Fusion, a spin-off from heavy-ion collisions

6:15 PM Experimental investigations of laser-driven ion acceleration and fusion reaction enhanced by Plasmonic Nanostructured Targets

Experimental irradiation of plasmonic nanostructured polymer targets, including boron-containing thin foils and advanced composite structures, has been systematically investigated under high-intensity femtosecond laser pulses to explore resonant plasmonic field enhancement for improving the performance of laser-driven ion acceleration and aneutronic fusion efficiency. Experimental campaigns at the Wigner Research Centre for Physics and ELI-ALPS focused on evaluating the influence of plasmonic effects on the generation of energetic protons/ions and the corresponding increase in fusion yield. Sophisticated diagnostic tools were used to characterize high-energy ions generated during laser-plasma interactions, including Thomson parabola spectrometry, CR-39 nuclear track detectors, and alpha particle detectors, which enabled the simultaneous measurement of ion spectra and fusion-generated alpha particles, providing evidence for plasmon-assisted fusion mechanisms. This work contributes to the development of compact laser-driven fusion sources for potential applications in fusion energy and medical research, while also advancing the investigation of plasmonics in strong-field physics.

Speakers: Imene Benabdelghani (HUN-REN Wigner Research Centre for Physics, Budapest, Hungary), Benabdelghani Imene

6:45 PM → 7:45 PM Public Talk: Universe or Multiverse?

Cosmological observations show that the universe is remarkably uniform on the largest scales accessible to our telescopes. The inflationary theory offers the most compelling theoretical explanation for this uniformity. Rather paradoxically, this theory predicts that on extremely large scales, much greater than what we can see now, the world may look totally different. Instead of being a single spherically symmetric expanding balloon, our universe may look like a "multiverse," a collection of many different exponentially large balloons ("universes") with different laws of low-energy physics operating in each. The new cosmological paradigm, supported by developments in string theory, alters the standard views on the origin and the global structure of the universe and on our own place in the world.

Speakers: Andrei Linde (Stanford University), Andrei Linde

Public_Lecture_28July_Linde_2.pdf

8:00 PM → 9:00 PM Dinner

Tue, July 29

9:00 AM → 9:30 AM Special Session on Quantum Information and Quantum Optics

9:00 AM Quantum Frequential Computing: a quadratic runtime advantage for all computations

An enduring challenge in computer science is reducing the runtime required to solve computational problems. Quantum computing has attracted significant attention due to its potential to deliver asymptotically faster solutions to certain problems compared to the best-known classical algorithms. This advantage is enabled by the quantum mechanical nature of the logical degrees of freedom. To date, it was unknown if permitting other parts of the computer to be quantum mechanical, rather than semi-classical, could yield additional runtime speed-ups as a function of resource utilization (e.g., power consumption or cooling requirements).
In this work, we prove that when the control mechanisms associated with gate implementation are optimal quantum mechanical states, a quadratic runtime speedup (with respect to power consumption) is achievable for any algorithm, relative to optimal classical or semi-classical control schemes. Moreover, we demonstrate that only a small fraction of the computer's architecture needs to employ optimal quantum control states to realize this advantage, thereby significantly simplifying the design of future systems.
We call this new device a quantum frequential computer, since the quantum speedup arises from an increase in gate frequency. In current state-of-the-art designs, gate frequency is often limited by the coupling strength between components. Notably, our approach achieves the speedup without requiring an increase in coupling strength.

See https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.02389 for a preprint

Speaker: Mischa Woods (ENS Lyon, Lyon France)

9:30 AM → 10:00 AM High Energy Particle Physics

9:30 AM Highlights on top quark physics with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC

The large top quark samples collected with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC have yielded measurements of the production cross section of unprecedented precision and in new kinematic regimes. They have also enabled new measurements of top quark properties that were previously inaccessible, enabled the observation of many rare top quark production processes predicted by the Standard Model and boosted searches in the Top sector. In this contribution the highlights of the ATLAS top quark physics program are presented.

Speaker: Barbora Eckerova (Comenius University (SK))

10:00 AM → 10:30 AM Workshop on Laser Fusion, a spin-off from heavy-ion collisions

10:00 AM Laser Induced p+11B Fusion by Resonant Nanoplasmonic Antennas

The NanoPlasmonic Laser Induced Fusion Energy (NAPLIFE) project aims to avoid pre-detonation and instabilities by rapid and simultaneous ignition of the whole target. The project plans fusion by regulating the laser light absorption via resonant nanorod antennas implanted into a hydrogen rich polymer target. Up to now this is the only project using this method. In part of the tests, boron-nitride (BN) was added to the polymer. Theoretical considerations and first verification experiments will be presented. Our experiments with resonant nanoantennas accelerated protons up to 225 keV energy were accelerated. Some of these protons then led to p + 11B fusion, indicated by the sharp drop of observed backward proton emission numbers at the 150 keV resonance energy of the reaction. Variations of the nanoplasmonic target configurations are under study.

Speaker: Prof. Laszlo Pal Csernai (University of Bergen)

10:30 AM → 11:00 AM Coffee break

11:00 AM → 12:00 PM Workshop on Laser Fusion, a spin-off from heavy-ion collisions

11:00 AM Controlling proton acceleration inspired by Yagi antennas in plasma simulation environment for NAPLIFE fusion

Rapid progress in laser technology and insights from astrophysics and relativistic heavy-ion collisions have opened new possibilities for fusion [1, 2]. When nanoantennas are implanted into a target and resonate with the laser frequency, electrons form bunches within them. The motion of these bunches generates a nanoplasmonic wave. Particle-in-cell simulations are not typically employed to describe these interactions.

We present a brief update on new simulations and their results for the NAPLIFE project. We use particle-in-cell (PIC) methods—a kinetic model—to simulate laser–material interactions inside a box filled with ionizable atoms, with nanoantennas represented by gold ions surrounded by a conduction-band electron cloud.

Simulations show that Yagi-like nanoantenna doping greatly enhances energy absorption in laser–matter interactions, depending on laser intensity, even surpassing our previous studies [3] involving simple dipole and crossed quadrupole designs. Crossed antennas maintain resonance regardless of orientation and outperform dipoles at higher laser intensities, while dipole antennas lose efficiency due to electron ejection at extreme fields. Yagi-like antennas, acting as multiple 3D crossed configurations, sustain stronger fields and achieve greater proton energies. These findings not only support the use of nanoantenna arrays as promising tools for optimizing inertial confinement fusion, but also encourage further development of nanoparticle fabrication techniques.

Speaker: Dr Istvan Papp

11:30 AM Enhanced Energy Transfer in Resonating Gold Doped Matter Irradiated by Infrared Laser

Enhanced Energy Transfer in Resonating Gold Doped Matter Irradiated by Infrared Laser
Abstract
Recent advancements in laser-induced fusion have revealed that resonating dopes in matter can enhance energy absorption from laser waves, facilitating fusion initiation, particularly in laser-driven inertial confinement fusion (ICF). We numerically model and investigate the interaction of intense laser pulses with matter doped with gold nanoparticles of various shapes and configurations. Using a kinetic model implemented in EPOCH numerical software, we examine the response of gold-doped matter to short, intense bursts of infrared radiation (~800 nm, ~100 fs), and model electron ejection dynamics, ionization, and energy transfer, focusing on the energy of protons upon ionization of matter.
Our simulations confirm that nanoantennas significantly enhance energy absorption compared to undoped matter. Among various shapes, dipole and crossed nanoantennas stand out for their resonance efficiency. Crossed quadrupole nanoantennas maintain resonance regardless of orientation, unlike dipoles, which require alignment with the polarization vector E. The energy absorption peaks at nanoantenna arm size ~85 nm. Increasing the laser intensity to 4×10^17 W/cm² results in more than an order-of-magnitude increase in ion energy as compared with that for 4×10^15 W/cm² wave. Further increase to 4×10^18 W/cm² does not yield significant energy gain for protons in the presence of dipole antennas. Energy saturation is observed due to ejection of conduction electrons, disrupting the resonance. Our theoretical results for dipole antenna dopes agree with the experiments, conducted at ELI-ALPs laboratories at Szeged (HU), confirming their validity.
The 3D crossed sextuples yield ~ 2 times stronger field around as compared with dipoles; crossed antennas yield ~ 2 gain over the dipoles. Moreover, the dipole nanoantennas lose their efficiency earlier than 2D and 3D crosses, making the latter more suitable for extreme fields. These advanced antenna configurations especially in the close placement enhance the near field between them and prove to be most efficient at producing high-energy protons at high intensities, outperforming optimally aligned dipoles.
Our discoveries suggest that nanoantenna doping optimizes energy absorption in laser-matter interactions, making crossed quadrupoles especially in 3D configuration and paired placement a promising candidate for enhancing ICF fuel ignition and other high-intensity laser applications.

Speaker: Konstantin Zhukovsky

12:00 PM → 1:00 PM High Energy Particle Physics

12:00 PM CMS Higgs Results

The talk will present the latest results in the Higgs boson sector from the CMS collaboration. It will cover results in the bosonic and fermionic final states as well as Higgs pairs production and prospectives for the full Run3 luminosity and HL-LHC

Speaker: Dr Giacomo Ortona (Universita e INFN Torino (IT))

12:30 PM Highlights on Higgs physics with ATLAS

This talk presents an overview of the Higgs measurements from ATLAS, including highlights on Higgs couplings, di-Higgs searches, and recent HL-LHC results.

Speaker: Stylianos Angelidakis (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (GR))

1:00 PM → 2:00 PM Lunch

2:00 PM → 4:30 PM Break

4:30 PM → 5:00 PM Coffee break

5:00 PM → 5:25 PM Cosmology, Astrophysics, Gravity, Mathematical Physics

5:00 PM Mass Composition Studies at the Pierre Auger Observatory

The Pierre Auger Observatory is the world’s largest cosmic-ray detector, designed to study ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs). A key observable for determining their mass composition is the depth of the maximum of air showers, $X_\text{max}$. Using the Fluorescence Detector (FD), $X_\text{max}$ is measured with high precision, albeit with a limited duty cycle. A recent analysis extends the FD dataset to include all data up to the end of 2021, increasing statistics and improving measurements of the energy evolution of both the mean and fluctuations of $X_{\text{max}}$ above $10^{17.8}$  eV. These results help constrain the composition and test hadronic interaction models.
Complementary to this, a deep-learning-based reconstruction of $X_\text{max}$ has been developed using the Surface Detector (SD) array, which operates with nearly 100% duty cycle. The method employs a neural network with long short-term memory (LSTM) layers and hexagonal convolutions, trained on simulations and calibrated with hybrid events. Applied to over 48,000 SD events recorded between 2004 and 2018, it achieves a resolution better than 25 g/cm² above $2\times10^{19}$ eV, enabling the measurement of the mean and fluctuations of $X_{\text{max}}$ up to $10^{20}$ eV using SD data alone. The results confirm a trend towards heavier and more uniform composition at the highest energies and reveal features in the composition evolution that correlate with spectral structures in the energy distribution. In this talk, we will summarize these recent results and discuss their implications for understanding the nature of UHECRs.

Speaker: Nikolas Denner (Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences)

5:00 PM → 5:20 PM Special Session on neutrino physics

5:00 PM Study of $2\beta$ decays of $^{150}$Nd.

The $2\nu2\beta$ decay of $^{150}$Nd to the first excited 0$^{+}_{1}$ state of $^{150}$Sm (E$_{exc}$ = 740.5 keV) was studied using the low-background GeMulti setup consisting of four HPGe detectors (volume $\simeq$225 cm$^3$ each) at the Gran Sasso National Laboratories of INFN. A 2.38 kg highly purified Nd$_2$O$_3$ sample was used as the source of expected $\gamma$ rays. The de-excitation $\gamma$ rays with energies 334.0 keV and 406.5 keV were observed in both one-dimensional and coincidence spectra accumulated over 5.845 years. By interpreting an excess of the 334.0 keV peak area as an indication of decay to the 334.0 keV 2$^{+}_{1}$ excited level of $^{150}$Sm with a half-life of T$_{1/2}=[1.5^{+2.3}_{-0.6}\text{(stat)}^{+0.5}_{-0.3}\text{(syst)}] \times 10^{20}$ yr, the $2\nu2\beta$ half-life of $^{150}$Nd for the transition to the 0$^{+}_{1}$ level was determined to be T$_{1/2}= [1.03^{+0.35}_{-0.22}\text{(stat)}^{+0.16}_{-0.19}\text{(syst)}\times10^{20}$ yr, in good agreement with previous experiments. Both half-lives are reasonably consistent with theoretical predictions based on proton-neutron QRPA with isospin restoration, combined with like nucleon QRPA for the description of excited states in the final nuclei.

Speaker: Alice Leoncini (University of Rome Tor Vergata)

5:00 PM → 6:20 PM Workshop on Instruments and Methods

5:00 PM ATLAS New Small Wheel Performance Studies with LHC Run-3 data

The most important ATLAS upgrade for LHC run-3 has been in the Muon
Spectrometer, where the replacement of the two forward inner stations with the New Small Wheels (NSW) introduced two novel detector technologies: the small-strip Thin Gap Chambers (sTGC) and the resistive strips Micromegas (MM).
The integration of the two NSW in the ATLAS endcaps marks the culmination of an extensive construction, testing, and installation program.
The NSW actively contributes to the muon spectrometer’s trigger and tracking functions, after a period of commissioning in 2022, with continuous effort in performance optimisation.
This presentation reports on performance studies on the NSW system, based on the LHC run-3 dataset.

Speaker: Michael Schernau (Instituto De Alta Investigación, Universidad de Tarapacá (CL))

5:20 PM Background Rate Measurements for the New Small Wheels of ATLAS

The instantaneous luminosity of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN will be increased by about a factor of five with respect to the design value by undergoing an extensive upgrade program over the coming decade. The largest phase-1 upgrade project for the ATLAS Muon System was the replacement of the first station in the forward regions with the New Small Wheels (NSWs) which took place during the long LHC shutdown in 2019- 2021. The two Small Wheels cover a positive and negative pseudorapidity acceptance in the range |η| = 1.3 to 2.7. Both Small Wheels have been successfully installed in ATLAS in 2021 and took data from p+p collisions at 13.6 TeV in 2022, 2023, 2024 and started taking data in 2025.
Along with resistive strips Micromegas, the NSW’s are equipped with eight layers of small-strip thin gap chambers (sTGC). The new system is designed to assure high tracking e]iciency, reduction of fake trigger rates and precision measurement of muon tracks. In this presentation we will show results on the rates of the NSW detectors.

Speaker: Sonia Kabana (Instituto De Alta Investigación, Universidad de Tarapacá (CL))

5:40 PM Beam Tests of the Scintillation Detector Based on Strong Scattering Media

The opaque scintillation detector is a novel concept for next-generation position-sensitive detectors. Its principle is to localize scintillation light near its emission point using an optically scattering medium. Our design employs a solid granular organic scintillator coupled with an array of wavelength-shifting fibers and SiPMs for light collection. This report presents the results of a beam test conducted on a 10 cm-scale prototype, using external proportional chambers as a tracking system. Key characteristics, including spatial response, light yield, energy resolution, and coordinate accuracy, are discussed. Additionally, Monte Carlo simulation and its comparision with experimental data are presented.

Speaker: Artemiy Krapiva (LPI)

6:00 PM Time of Flight system of the BM@N/NICA experiment. Performance and particle identification results.

The BM@N (Baryonic Matter at Nuclotron) is a fix target experiment at the accelerator complex NICA. The Nuclotron accelerator provides variety of the beams from protons to gold with the kinetic energy from 1 to 6 GeV per nucleon. The goal of the experiment is a study of the baryonic matter at high density and temperature in collisions of relativistic ions. To reach this goal the BM@N integrates various detectors for triggering, tracking and identification. The high precision tracking is done with the help of the GEM detectors. For particle identification, two high performance time-of-flight walls based on mRPC are used. The BM@N experimental setup used in 2022 to collect data on Xe+CsI collisions will be described in the report. The methods of calibration and analysis of the time-of-flight data as well as the performance of the detectors and preliminary result of the particle identification will be present.

Speaker: Mikhail Rumyantsev (Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (RU))

5:20 PM → 5:40 PM High Energy Particle Physics

5:20 PM Implementation of a kinematic fit algorithm in the search for Higgs boson pairs produced at the LHC and detected with ATLAS in the $b\bar{b}\gamma\gamma$ final state

The observation of Higgs boson pairs is a fundamental step towards understanding the model of spontaneous electro-weak symmetry breaking as it represents the most direct method to estimate the cubic term of the Higgs boson potential, responsible for the tri-linear self-coupling of the boson ($\lambda_{HHH}$).

Speaker: Romano Orlandini (Universita e INFN Roma Tre (IT))

5:25 PM → 6:40 PM Outreach

5:25 PM Outreach activities of the Pierre Auger Observatory

The Pierre Auger Observatory, located in the region of Malargue, Argentina, is the world's largest detector dedicated to the study of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. The Observatory has been in operation for more than twenty years, gathering unprecedented statistics of extensive air showers and leading to significant advances in our understanding of the nature and origin of these particles. Recently, the Observatory underwent a major upgrade with the installation of novel detectors and enhanced electronics, and entered a new period of measurements. During all this time, the Pierre Auger Collaboration has adopted the mission of disseminating knowledge about astroparticle physics and sharing its results with the society. This has been accomplished through the implementation of a diverse program of educational and scientific outreach activities, reaching different publics and parts of the world. In this contribution, we introduce the Auger outreach strategy and describe its main activities, while presenting an overview of its impact and some reflections looking to the future.

Speaker: Dr Raul Sarmento (LIP)

5:50 PM Activities for teachers and students to introduce the High Energy Messengers.

As part of the OCRA (Outreach Cosmic Rays Activities) and PNRR-CTA+ Outreach Programme of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) in Italy, two workshops were held for high school teachers. The aim was to inspire them to develop original teaching methods and introduce modern gamma-ray and cosmic ray research topics into their curricula. The projects covered a wide range of topics and employed a compact muon telescope, a Cosmic Rays Cube and the user-friendly Firmamento web tool to study blazar spectra. Additionally, during the 2024–25 school year, initiatives were launched to encourage high school students to apply the scientific method in the classroom. Organized into groups of two to three people, the high school students followed all the typical steps of a research project, from data retrieval and analysis to publishing their results in paper form. The groups presented their results in a final session organized as a physics research conference. This approach enables participants to develop various soft skills, such as independently investigating a theory, collaborating in groups, managing their time effectively, critically evaluating information, and composing a thorough final paper.

Speaker: Dr Carla Aramo

6:15 PM ATLAS outreach

Invited, please double-check what is the proper track

Speaker: Stylianos Angelidakis (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (GR))

7:00 PM → 7:45 PM Poster Session

7:00 PM Mechanisms of Matter Generation in the Early Universe: Leptogenesis and Baryogenesis

Introduction
One of the most profound questions in modern physics is why the Universe is dominated by matter, with virtually no primordial antimatter observed today. According to the Standard Model of cosmology, the early Universe should have produced matter and antimatter in equal quantities during the Big Bang. However, the observable Universe shows a clear asymmetry: matter prevails. This discrepancy suggests that processes occurred in the early Universe that favored the generation of matter over antimatter, a phenomenon known as baryogenesis. A closely related concept is leptogenesis, which proposes that an initial asymmetry among leptons could have been transformed into a baryon asymmetry through well-understood physical processes. This article explores the fundamental mechanisms behind these two key phenomena.

Conditions for Baryogenesis
The Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov formulated three necessary conditions for baryogenesis in 1967:

Baryon number violation: There must be processes that allow the number of baryons (particles like protons and neutrons) to change.

C and CP violation: Charge conjugation symmetry (C) and charge-parity symmetry (CP) must be violated to distinguish between matter and antimatter behavior.

Departure from thermal equilibrium: These baryon-violating processes must occur out of thermal equilibrium to prevent the re-establishment of a symmetric state.

The Standard Model partially satisfies these conditions, but not sufficiently to explain the observed baryon asymmetry, suggesting that physics beyond the Standard Model is needed.

Leptogenesis
Leptogenesis is a theoretical mechanism that connects the asymmetry in the lepton sector to the baryon sector. The idea is based on the existence of heavy right-handed neutrinos, as predicted by extensions to the Standard Model such as the seesaw mechanism. These heavy neutrinos could have decayed asymmetrically into leptons and antileptons in the early Universe.

The key steps in leptogenesis are:

Out-of-equilibrium decay: Heavy neutrinos decay as the Universe expands and cools, producing a lepton asymmetry.

CP violation: The decays preferentially produce more leptons than antileptons (or vice versa), violating CP symmetry.

Sphaleron processes: At high temperatures, non-perturbative electroweak processes, called sphalerons, convert part of the lepton asymmetry into a baryon asymmetry.

Thus, leptogenesis elegantly ties the matter-antimatter asymmetry to the physics of neutrinos, providing a compelling link between cosmology and particle physics.

Baryogenesis Mechanisms
Besides leptogenesis, several direct mechanisms for baryogenesis have been proposed:

GUT baryogenesis: In Grand Unified Theories (GUTs), heavy gauge bosons decay asymmetrically into quarks and leptons, creating baryon asymmetry.

Electroweak baryogenesis: During the electroweak phase transition, conditions might have allowed CP-violating interactions that generate baryon asymmetry, although this requires extensions to the Standard Model (e.g., additional Higgs bosons).

Affleck–Dine baryogenesis: In supersymmetric theories, scalar fields carrying baryon number evolve dynamically, leading to a net baryon number.

Each mechanism has different implications for high-energy physics experiments and cosmological observations.

Current Status and Future Prospects
Experimental confirmation of leptogenesis and baryogenesis remains a major challenge. Indirect evidence may come from studies of neutrino properties, such as:

Neutrinoless double-beta decay, which would indicate that neutrinos are Majorana particles (their own antiparticles).

Precision measurements of neutrino masses and mixing angles, which are crucial for leptogenesis scenarios.

High-energy collider experiments (e.g., LHC and future colliders) and cosmological observations (e.g., cosmic microwave background polarization, gravitational waves from phase transitions) may also provide critical insights.

Understanding the origin of matter is one of the most exciting frontiers in physics, promising to reveal new laws of nature and a deeper understanding of the Universe’s history.

Conclusion
The asymmetry between matter and antimatter remains an open question in fundamental physics. Leptogenesis and baryogenesis offer compelling theoretical frameworks that connect particle physics, cosmology, and the early Universe. Ongoing and future research aims to uncover experimental signatures of these processes, potentially reshaping our understanding of the Universe's origin and evolution.

References
Sakharov, A. D. (1967). Violation of CP Invariance, C Asymmetry, and Baryon Asymmetry of the Universe. JETP Letters, 5, 24–27.

Fukugita, M., & Yanagida, T. (1986). Baryogenesis Without Grand Unification. Physics Letters B, 174(1), 45–47. https://doi.org/10.1016/0370-2693(86)91126-3

Speaker: Mr Bakhtiyar Iskakov (Farabi Universuty)

7:05 PM A Solution of the Scalar Nonet Mass Puzzle

We propose an explanation of the inverse mass hierarchy of the low-lying nonet of the scalar mesons in the framework of the massless Nambu–Jona-Lasinio U_R(3)xU_L(3) quark model. The collective meson states are described via quark–antiquark pairs, whose condensates lead simultaneously to spontaneous breaking of chiral and flavour symmetries. It is shown that, due to flavour symmetry breaking, two iso-doublets of K_0(700) mesons play the role of Goldstone bosons. It is also proven that there exists a solution with degenerate masses of the a_0(980)
and f_0(980) mesons and a zero mass of the f_0(500) meson.

Speaker: Mihail Chizhov

7:10 PM Development and Performance of the Real-Time Muon Reconstruction for the L0 Trigger in HL-LHC ATLAS

We will present a detailed performance assessment of the implemented logic and provide an in-depth discussion of the validation strategy and methodology, which has been successfully integrated into our development workflow for the muon reconstruction in the Level-0 (L0) trigger in HL-LHC. The muon trigger will be fully upgraded with a real-time reconstruction system for HL-LHC. The new logic, implemented on a large-scale FPGA, identifies and reconstructs muon tracks using hit coincidences within the same bunch crossing and pattern-finding algorithms realized with Look-Up Tables in RAM. Designed as a pipeline trigger logic, it processes all events from the 40 MHz collision rate with a fixed latency.

To ensure reliability, we have developed a comprehensive verification framework consisting of a test vector generator, bitwise simulator, firmware RTL (register transfer level) simulator, and actual hardware. The firmware has undergone extensive validation using test vectors derived from Monte Carlo simulations. Intensive debugging has resulted in significant improvements, represented by enhanced plateau efficiency and momentum resolution in RTL simulation. The final trigger performance has been evaluated in terms of efficiency as functions of transverse momentum, pseudorapidity, and azimuth angles using a high-statistics dataset of simulated tracks. The performance is well aligned with the expected performance and shows precisely consistent results between bitwise and RTL simulators.

Speaker: Airu Makita (University of Tokyo (JP))

7:15 PM The impact of the 𝑋17 boson on particle physics anomalies: Muon anomalous magnetic moment, Lamb shift and 𝑊 mass.

We show that the 𝑋_17 vector boson, introduced to explain the 8Be anomalous decay, could play a role in the muon’s (electron’s) anomalous magnetic moment and the muonic Lamb shift anomaly. We compute an upper bound on the couplings of 𝑋_17 to leptons and nucleons, analyzing these anomalies. We further constrain the possible kinetic mixing with the 𝑈(1)_𝑌 boson of the Standard Model by using the latest available data on the 𝑊 boson mass.

Speaker: Antonio Capolupo (Università di Salerno)

8:00 PM → 11:30 PM Conference Dinner, Cretan night with live music and dance in OAC

Wed, July 30

9:00 AM → 10:00 AM Cosmology, Astrophysics, Gravity, Mathematical Physics

9:00 AM Vacuum energy reduction by massless scalar field

There is a strong conflict between the huge value of vacuum energy according to theoretical estimates and the observed upper bound of its value. We propose a mechanism of the vacuum energy adjustment down to the existing observational limits via an interaction of the massless scalar field with the curvature scalar. An uncompensated remnant could possibly be identified with the observed magnitude of the cosmological dark energy.

Speaker: Elena Arbuzova (Dubna State University and Novosibirsk State University)

9:30 AM AEgIS experiment: recent developments and upgrades

The AEgIS experiment at CERN is primarily designed to investigate the gravitational interaction between matter and antimatter by measuring the free fall of antihydrogen in a field-free environment. Its core objective is to test the weak equivalence principle for antimatter using a pulsed antihydrogen beam and high-precision spatial detection. In parallel, AEgIS pursues a range of complementary research goals, including the physics of positronium in strong magnetic and cryogenic environments, as well as the formation and spectroscopy of exotic atoms involving antiprotons and negative ions.
In 2024, AEgIS completed a comprehensive set of upgrades to its experimental infrastructure, significantly enhancing the stability, automation, and performance of the apparatus. Key developments included the installation of a forward extraction beamline enabling antihydrogen transport beyond the magnetic confinement region, the integration of a higher-activity positron source, and improved control of Rydberg laser excitation. These advancements facilitated extended data-taking runs with increased antihydrogen yield and reproducibility. On the physics front, progress was made in positronium production and excitation under cryogenic, high-field conditions, as well as in the time-of-flight spectroscopy of ions from antiproton annihilation. Concurrently, the R&D program advanced the implementation of a moiré deflectometer for gravity measurements, developed position- and time-sensitive detection systems, and explored techniques for handling negative ions and portable antiproton traps to support future precision studies of exotic atoms.

Speaker: Kamila Marta Kempny (Warsaw University of Technology (PL))

10:00 AM → 10:30 AM Workshop on QCD

10:00 AM Exotic hadrons and hadron structure

Hadrons, including mesons and baryons, constitute the smallest observable units with internal structure that can be separated from matter. The search for new hadronic states and the exploration of the internal quark-gluon structure of hadrons represent a shared frontier research topic in both particle physics and medium-to-high energy nuclear physics. In recent years, an increasing number of exotic hadronic states that lie beyond the predictions of the classical quark model have been experimentally observed. Although various interpretations exist regarding their nature, these exotic states can largely be explained within the framework of the multiquark hadronic molecular state picture. Furthermore, even for hadrons previously thought to conform to the quark model, such as the proton, new experimental observables have emerged that cannot be explained by the classical quark model and require the consideration of multiquark components arising from unquenching mechanisms. Consequently, a true understanding of the hadron spectrum and hadron structure necessitates the study of multiquark exotic hadronic states.

References:
(1) F.K.Guo, C.Hanhart, U.G.Meißner, Q.Wang, Q.Zhao, B.S.Zou, “Hadronic molecules”, Rev. Mod. Phys. 90 (2018) 015004:
(2) X.K.Dong, F.K.Guo, B.S.Zou, “Explaining the many threshold structures in hadron spectrum with heavy quarks”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 126 (2021) 152001.
(3) X.K.Dong, F.K.Guo, B.S.Zou, “A survey of heavy-antiheavy hadronic molecules”, Progr. Phys. 41 (2021) 65
(4) X.K.Dong, F.K.Guo, B.S.Zou, “A survey of heavy-heavy hadronic molecules”, Commu. Theor. Phys. 73 (2021) 125201.
(5) S. M. Wu, F. Wang, B. S. Zou, “Strange molecular partners of Pc states in γp→ϕp reaction”, Phys. Rev. C108 (2023) 045201.

Speaker: Bingsong Zou

10:30 AM → 11:00 AM Coffee break

11:00 AM → 1:00 PM High Energy Particle Physics

11:00 AM LUCID, the ATLAS luminosity detector in LHC Run-3 and its upgrade for HL-LHC

The LUCID-2 detector is the main luminometer of the ATLAS experiment and the only one able to provide a reliable luminosity determination in all beam configurations, luminosity ranges and at bunch-crossing level. During LHC Run-2 ATLAS has measured luminosity with a precision of 0.8%, the most precise ever among all experiments running at a hadron collider. LUCID-2 is now providing ATLAS with the luminosity measurement also in LHC Run-3. Preliminary results on the acquired datasets will be presented, suggesting that a similar precision can be obtained.
The ATLAS physics program at High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) calls for a precision in the luminosity measurement of 1%. To fulfill such requirement in an environment characterized by up to 140 simultaneous interactions per crossing (200 in the ultimate scenario), ATLAS will feature several luminosity detectors. At least some of them must be both calibratable in the van der Meer scans at low luminosity and able to measure up to its highest values. LUCID-3, the upgrade of LUCID will fulfill such a condition. In this contribution, two options for LUCID-3 under study are presented: the first is based on photomultipliers (PMT), as for LUCID-2, located farther from the beam-pipe to reduce the acceptance and avoid the detector saturation; the second is based on optical fibers acting as Cherenkov radiators and read-out by PMTs located in a low radiation area. All PMTs will be monitored by a radioactive 207Bi source to ensure long-term stability to better than 1%. An upgrade of the readout electronics will also be needed. The status of the analysis of the data acquired in Run-3 with prototypes of both technologies installed in ATLAS will be presented focusing on the possible final LUCID-3 design

Speaker: Elisa Sanzani (Universita Di Bologna (IT))

11:25 AM Recent results on CPV from $b$-hadron to charmonium decays at LHCb

Benefiting from the clean experimental signature of dimuon detection, the LHCb experiment collects large samples of beauty hadron decays to charmonium. This allows for precise measurements of key properties such as branching fractions, lifetimes, and CP violation observables. In this work, we present the latest LHCb results on these decays, with a particular focus on the first evidence for CP violation in $b$-hadron decays along with the recent evidence in the baryon sector. Underlying mechanisms and future prospects will also be discussed.

Speaker: Xiaofan Hu (Tsinghua University (CN))

11:50 AM Detectors - calibration, performance (CMS)

The CMS experiment relies on high-precision reconstruction of particles to access a wide range of analyses. This talk presents recent developments in the reconstruction and performance of key objects using early Run 3 data. Advances include improved calibration techniques, machine learning-based identification, and improved pileup mitigation strategies.

Speaker: Raffaella Radogna (Universita e INFN, Bari (IT))

12:15 PM Electroweak and QCD Measurements in ATLAS

This talk will discuss recent results from the ATLAS experiment concerning measurements in the electroweak and QCD sector. The highlighted topics include precision measurements of Drell-Yan and multiboson processes (including vector-boson-scattering), differential measurements of vector boson plus jets and multijets, novel study of jet substructures, probe of soft QCD phenomena, and precision heavy-flavor measurements. These results help advance the understanding of important questions relating to electroweak symmetry breaking, electroweak Gauge structure, proton structure, flavor physics, perturbative QCD as well as fragmentation and hadronization. In addition, the new-generation measurements offer more sensitive constraints on new physics phenomena in the framework of Effective Field Theories.

Speaker: Laura Fabbri (Universita e INFN, Bologna (IT))

1:00 PM → 2:00 PM Lunch

2:00 PM → 4:30 PM Break

4:30 PM → 5:00 PM Coffee break

5:00 PM → 5:55 PM Cosmology, Astrophysics, Gravity, Mathematical Physics

5:00 PM Dilaton in a Deformed Gross-Neveu Model

The appearance of a dilaton in a charge-gapped phase of the three-dimensional Gross-Neveu model with time reversal violating deformation is discussed. Some implications in the context of two-dimensional Dirac materials are explored.

Speaker: Prof. Gordon Semenoff (University of British Columbia)

5:30 PM Born—Infeld type tachyonic dark energy model revisited with Pantheon+

More than a decade ago, a Born--Infeld type tachyonic dark energy model raised considerable interest, being able to drive the evolution of the universe to the presently dark energy dominated regime. Depending on the model parameters, a six-fold evolution turned possible. Early confrontation with Supernovae Ia and Hubble parameter data disruled evolutions of type IV and V. Further, the evolutions I and IIa were disruled by nucleosynthesis and stability arguments. Hence, only the evolutions IIb and III survived. They also survived CMB constraints imposed through a modified CAMB code.

These two types of evolutions are qualitatively very different. While both start from a Big Bang type initial singularity and both exhibit an accelerating phase nowadays, their future evolution could not differ more. IIb tends towards an exponentially expanding de Sitter attractor, similarly to LCDM. However, III passes from a subluminal evolution through luminal evolution into a tachyonic regime and eventually reaches in finite time the future soft singularity dubbed Big Brake, which is traversable for point particles, followed by a contraction phase.

We report on ongoing work aimed to retest the evolutions IIb and III with the currently available, most precise Supernovae Ia data from the Pantheon+ set. With their increased accuracy these investigations may provide a more conclusive answer on which type of tachyonic universe evolution is allowed by data: the one leading to de Sitter or the other one leading to a Big Brake?

Speaker: Balazs Kacskovics (HUN-REN Wigner Research Centre for Physics (HU))

5:55 PM → 8:00 PM Workshop on Dark matter from micro to macro

5:55 PM Dark Matter searches in ATLAS

Invited talk

Speaker: Christos Vergis (University of London (GB))

6:25 PM Warm Inflation with the Standard Model

We show for the first time that warm inflation is feasible with Standard Model (SM) gauge interactions alone. Our model consists of a minimal extension of the SM by a single scalar inflaton field with an axion-like coupling to gluons and a monomial potential. The effects of light fermions, which were previously argued to render warm inflation with the SM impossible, are alleviated by Hubble dilution of their chiral chemical potentials. Our model only features one adjustable combination of parameters and accommodates all inflationary observables. We briefly discuss implications for axion experiments, dark matter, and the strong CP-problem.

Speaker: Marco Drewes (Universite Catholique de Louvain (UCL) (BE))

6:55 PM Primordial Black Holes -- Positivist Perspective, Quantum Quiddity and Galaxy Genesis

Primordial black holes are black holes that may have formed in the early Universe. Their masses potentially span a range from as low as the Planck mass up to many orders of magnitude above the solar mass. This, in particular, includes those black holes recently discovered through gravitational waves, and (part of) these may conceivably be of primordial origin. After a general introduction on primordial black holes, I review the observational hints for their existence -- from a variety of lensing, dynamical, accretion and gravitational-wave effects. As I will show, all of these (over 20) may be explained by a single and simple unified model, naturally shaped by the thermal history of the Universe. If time permits, I discuss how recent advances in our understanding of quantum effects in black holes impact PBHs. On the one hand, this concerns deviations from Hawking radiation in the form of the memory-burden effect. On the other hand, I will discuss vorticity, which we recently conjectured to be a new characteristic of (near-extremally rotating) black holes. In the second part of my talk, I will present novel results on large-scale simulations of spatially-correlated random fields, being able to resolve events as rare as one in 10^{13}, and discuss their application to PBHs. Finally, I will elucidate on the role primordial black holes have on early galaxy and star formation.

Speakers: Florian Kühnel, Florian Kühnel

7:25 PM On the present status of inflationary cosmology

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Speaker: Andrei Linde

8:00 PM → 9:00 PM Dinner

Thu, July 31

9:00 AM → 9:30 AM High Energy Particle Physics

9:00 AM On the determination of the relative probability of $\mathit{\Upsilon}(5S) \rightarrow B^{(*)}_s\bar B^{(*)}_s$ decays.

Semileptonic decays of the $B \overline{B}$ pairs produced in the $\mathit{\Upsilon}(5S)$ can be used to find the relative probability of $\mathit{\Upsilon}(5S) \rightarrow B_s \overline{B}_s$ decays. This could be achieved by the study of time dependence of $B$-meson decays to the leptons of equal and opposite signs.

Speaker: Mikhail Vysotsky

9:30 AM → 10:00 AM Heavy Ion Collisions and Critical Phenomena

9:30 AM Comparing Tsallis and Boltzmann temperatures in relativistic heavy-ion collisions at intermediate energies

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Speaker: Larisa Bravina

10:00 AM → 10:30 AM High Energy Particle Physics

10:00 AM Recent Progress of DarkSHINE R&D

Sci. China-Phys. Mech. Astron., 66(1): 211062 (2023)
arXiv:2411.09345 [Conceptual Design Report]
Nucl. Sci. Tech.35,148(2024)
Nucl. Sci. Tech.35,201(2024)
Nucl. Sci. Tech. 36,41(2025)
arXiv:2407.20723 [submitted to JINST]
arXiv:2401.15477 [10.1007/978-981-97-0065-3_19]
PoS ICHEP2024 (2025) 728 [DOI:10.22323/1.476.0728]
DOI:10.5281/zenodo.8373963 [LeptonPhoton2023 proceeding]
DOI:10.1016/j.nuclphysbps.2024.06.019 [CLHCP2023 proceeding]
DOI:10.1016/j.nuclphysbps.2024.07.008 [CLHCP2023 proceeding]
DOI:10.1016/j.nuclphysbps.2024.06.014 [CLHCP2023 proceeding]
DOI:10.1016/j.nuclphysbps.2024.07.003 [CLHCP2023 proceeding]

DarkSHINE is a fixed-target experiment initiative to search for light Dark Matter and mediators at SHINE (Shanghai high repetition rate XFEL and extreme light facility, being the 1st hard X-ray FEL in China) under construction targeting completion in 2025/2026. DarkSHINE aims to search for the new mediator, Dark Photon, bridging the Dark sector and the ordinary matter. In this work and presentation, we present the idea of this new project and 1st prospective study in search for Dark Photon decaying into light dark matter as well as the very recent technical R&D progresses. It also provides the opportunity to incorporate broader scope of BSM search ideas such as ALP / Anomalous Muonium / LLP / etc. and electron/photon/neutrino-nuclear interaction product measurements, utilizing the fixed-target experiment of this type. Also in the future, DarkSHINE experiment has the great potential to be upgraded into positron beam mode and search for Dark Photon via more production channels through s/t-channel annihilations.

Speaker: Kun Liu (Tsung-Dao Lee Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University)

10:30 AM → 11:00 AM Coffee break

11:00 AM → 11:50 AM High Energy Particle Physics

11:00 AM Overview of the ePIC-dRICH detector at the EIC and beam test results

The dual-radiator (dRICH) detector in the ePIC experiment at the upcoming Electron-Ion
Collider (EIC) will make use of SiPM sensors to detect the emitted Cherenkov light. The
photodetector will cover an area of approximately 3 m² with 3×3 mm² pixels, for a total of more
than 300,000 readout channels. This will represent the Jirst use of SiPMs for single-photon
detection in a collider experiment. SiPMs are chosen for their low cost and high photon
detection efJiciency, which remains stable even in the presence of a signiJicant magnetic Jield
(~1 T at the dRICH location).
However, as SiPMs are not radiation-hard, special care is required to preserve their singlephoton
counting capabilities and keep the dark count rate (DCR) under control over the course
of the ePIC experiment’s operation. This can be achieved by operating the SiPMs at low
temperatures and by mitigating radiation damage through high-temperature annealing cycles.
Additionally, the precise timing of SiPMs, combined with fast TDC electronics, helps in reducing
the impact of DCR as background noise and improves the signal-to-noise ratio.
In this talk, we present an overview of the ePIC-dRICH photodetector system with highlights
from the R&D performed for the operation of the SiPM optical readout in the ePIC experiment.
Special focus will be given to development and beam test results of a large-area prototype SiPM
readout plane consisting of a total of up to 2048 3x3 mm² sensors. The photodetector prototype
is modular and based on a novel EIC-driven photodetection unit (PDU) developed by INFN,
which integrates 256 SiPM pixel sensors, cooling and TDC electronics in a volume of ~ 5 x 5 x
14 cm³. Several PDU modules have been built and successfully tested with particle beams at
CERN-PS in October 2023 and in May 2024. The data have been collected with a complete chain
of front-end and readout electronics based on the ALCOR chip, developed by INFN Torino.
A description of the QA setup foreseen to perform quality tests on the matrices during the mass
production will also be given.

Speaker: Daniele De Gruttola (Salerno University and INFN)

11:25 AM Status and performance of the CMS Electromagnetic Calorimeter in Run 3 of LHC

The Electromagnetic Calorimeter (ECAL) of the CMS experiment at the LHC plays a vital role in various physics analyses, including Higgs boson studies and searches for new phenomena. Achieving accurate calibration of the detector and its individual channels is critical for optimizing the energy resolution of electrons and photons, as well as for measuring the electromagnetic components of jets and contributing to energy sums used to detect particles that do not generate a signal in the detector. To maintain consistent energy response over time, a laser monitoring system is utilized to track radiation-induced changes and compensate for them during data reconstruction. Additionally, each channel undergoes calibration using physics events. This presentation will review the methods employed for ECAL energy and time calibration and introduce a novel system developed to automate the calibration processes. The performance of the ECAL in 2024 and 2025 will also be highlighted.

Speaker: Marta Tornago (Université Paris-Saclay (FR))

11:50 AM → 12:15 PM Heavy Ion Collisions and Critical Phenomena

11:50 AM Graph Neural Network-based Algorithm for Track Finding in the CBM Experiment

The Compressed Baryonic Matter (CBM) experiment at FAIR is designed to explore the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter at high net-baryon densities with unprecedented interaction rates of up to 10 MHz. A key technical challenge in this environment is the reconstruction of charged particle trajectories in real time, under extreme track multiplicities and high background levels. Track finding consumes the majority of CBM’s total online computing resources and plays a critical role in enabling rare signal reconstruction and physics analysis.

We present a Graph Neural Network (GNN)-based algorithm for track finding in the CBM experiment. We use GNN, Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) and the Kalman Filter (KF). We use metric learning to construct a sparse graph on which a GNN is applied to filter edges. Adjacent edges are then combined to form triplets which are fitted with the KF and filtered further. Next, overlapping triplets are combined to form track candidates. Finally, we use a MLP classifier to rank and select tracks. This new track competition based on classifier score shows improved performance compared to the widely-used Cellular Automaton (CA).

This GNN algorithm has been implemented in CBMROOT, enabling direct comparison with CA Track Finder. Our GNN algorithm achieves 97% overall tracking efficiency compared to 95.5% of the CA Track Finder. Crucially, our GNN algorithm increases reconstruction efficiency of low-momentum secondary tracks by 7% while maintaining low fake rates. This greatly impacts physics analysis involving the reconstruction of short-lived particles.

Speaker: Prof. Ivan Kisel (Goethe University Frankfurt)

12:15 PM → 12:45 PM High Energy Particle Physics

12:15 PM Overview of charmed baryon decays at BESIII (highlight talk)

BESIII has accumulated 4.5 $fb^{-1}$ of e+e- collision data within the 4.6 and 4.7 GeV energy range, which provide the largest dataset of $\Lambda_c - \Lambda_c$ pairs in the world.
Our presentation will include the observation of a rare beta decay of the charmed baryon $\Lambda_c^+ \to n e^+ \nu$ with a Graph Neural Network and the first measurement of the decay asymmetry in the pure W-boson-exchange decay $\Lambda_c^+ \to \Xi^0 K^+$, as well as the branching fraction measurements of the inclusive decays $\Lambda_c^+ \to X e^+ \nu$ and $\bar{\Lambda_c}^- \to \bar{n} X$.
Furthermore, we will present the results of the partial wave analysis of $\Lambda_c^+ \to \Lambda \pi^+ \pi^0$, and $\Lambda_c^+ \to \Lambda \pi^+ \eta$. Our presentation will also include branching fraction measurements of Cabibbo-suppressed decays, including $\Lambda_c^+ \to p \pi^0$, and the measurements of $K_S-K_L$ asymmetries in the $\Lambda_c^+$ decays.

Speaker: Ying Liu (Lanzhou University (CN))

12:45 PM → 1:00 PM Closing of the conference

1:00 PM → 2:00 PM Lunch