2016 ACTIVITY REPORT
Foreword
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As we can see from the content of this report, we are involved in both fundamental and applied science in a wide range of items. We also benefit from the collaboration with the Lecce Units of Istituto nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) and of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (cNR). The Department gives a strong support to the research activities with a mechanical workshop, an electronics laboratory, a computing center and a center for dating and diagnostics which recently joined us. Obviously, also the administrative support is fundamental, especially for experimental activities. For the future I strongly hope for a closer collaboration between fundamental and applied science, which will certainly open new routes to our research activity. The Director of the Dipartimento di Matematica e Fisica "Ennio De Giorgi" Prof. Giovanni Mancarella 2016 has been a very fruitful year for fundamental physics. CERN's
giant accelerator LHC has obtained a record performance in terms of
data delivered to the experiments, about 60% more than anticipated.
Using these data the ATLAS Collaboration, which includes a very active group from Unisalento and INFN-Lecce, has published several new studies, mostly on the physics of the Higgs boson and on searches for signals of physics beyond the Standard Model. In Lecce the construction of the new tracking system for the MEG experiment has kept going almost through completion, which is foreseen for the fall of 2017. Exciting new data are arriving also from the cosmos to researchers in Lecce, through two big experiments: AUGER, the large cosmic ray observatory located in Argentina, and DAMPE an apparatus located on a chinese satellite orbiting the earth, to search for very high energy electrons and photons. INFN Lecce, in collaboration with colleagues in Bari, has also organized the now becoming traditional NOW workshop on Neutrino Physics in the beautiful landscape of Otranto. This year we had the privilege of hosting, among many other international participants, also the 2015 Nobel Prize winner Takaaki Kajita. The Director of the INFN sezione di Lecce Dott. Fabio Bossi |