ACCESS aims to establish a new technique to perform precision measurements of forbidden beta-decays, whose spectral shape is a crucial benchmark for Nuclear Physics calculations and plays a pivotal role in Astroparticle Physics experiments. When fundamental conservation laws strongly suppress a beta decay, it features a high transferred momentum, as in the case of neutrinoless double-beta decay (NLDBD). Relying on this similarity, ACCESS will provide groundbreaking insights to evaluate Nuclear Matrix Elements for NLDBD. ACCESS will operate a pilot array of four tellurium dioxide crystals as cryogenic calorimeters. Three of them will be doped with different beta emitters, while the last natural one will be used for effective background subtraction. My experience with cryogenic calorimeters based on semiconductor sensors (i.e. NTD) will be a solid basement for the project, but an essential piece of the puzzle is still missing. ACCESS requires high statistical measurements in an ultra-clean underground cryostat, available for limited time slots. A fast detector is mandatory to collect the required number of signals, keeping the background low, and avoiding the pileup due to the high counting rate. To fulfill this requirement, I will complete my training during the first two years of the action at Queen’s University. Here I will learn to build and operate bolometers based on superconductive sensors (i.e. TES), among the faster sensors used in Astroparticle Physics. I will transfer my NTD-oriented expertise to the local group, and together we will integrate these two sensors for a novel application. In the last year, I will move to GSSI, a research center of excellence recently established in Italy. Here I will perform the final measurements at LNGS (Gran Sasso National Laboratory), a world-leading underground research infrastructure of INFN. My new skills and research network will enrich the local astroparticle group, extending its research field also to Nuclear Physics.

Where do Cosmic Rays (CRs) originate? How do CRs interact with the environment during their journey to Earth? GRAPES aims at revealing the origin of galactic CRs, 100 years after their discovery, by achieving the most accurate description of CR propagation in the interstellar medium (ISM). More specifically: 1) What is the mechanism of propagation in the Galaxy? Measurements show fine structures in the observed CR spectra, but we have exceedingly simplified transport models. In view of the challenges that recent observations posed to conventional homogeneous CR diffusion models, we will develop the first self-consistent simulation of interstellar CR propagation, including non-linear processes, anisotropic diffusion and galactic winds. 2) Where do CR become extra-galactic? Understanding propagation at the end of the galactic CR spectrum is compelling towards the identification of galactic sources. We will provide an innovative approach able to describe at once the CR spectrum and anisotropy up to the knee energy attacking the pending theoretical and observational challenges. These questions are profound, challenging and appealing and can be efficiently pursued only through a new advance in the complex numerical modeling of galactic CR transport and by establishing a tight collaboration between communities involved in CR physics. We live in exciting years, since for the first time experimental techniques allow (or are going to allow) forefront questions to be tackled with the necessary sensitivity. The enormous discovery potential is further witnessed by the fact that the two most advanced experimental projects categorized by the European Astroparticle priority roadmap are specifically tailored to map the high-energy gamma (CTA) and neutrino (KM3NeT) sky with unprecedented level of detail. It is then the perfect time for a motivated and internationally experienced researcher (ER) to connect theoretical modeling and observations at a high level of physical complexity.

Interacting bosons are unique quantum systems, whose low temperature phases exhibit fascinating quantum mechanics effects at a macroscopic scale. In the past two decades, the mathematical understanding of these systems improved tremendously. However, their behavior in the thermodynamic limit is still poorly understood, although this is the appropriate large scale limit to prove the emergence of scaling laws and universality, as well as to investigate the occurrence of phase transitions. MaTCh aims at investigating the low energy properties of interacting bosons in the thermodynamic limit, and at gaining a mathematical understanding of the emergence of correlated phases, in the form of Bose-Einstein condensation and quasi-long range order, as well as of their instabilities, due to thermal fluctuations or three-body recombination effects of Efimov type. Our plan is to exploit scaling limits as a framework to identify and overcome, one at a time, the mathematical obstructions that currently prevent us to control the system at finite density in the thermodynamic limit. In order to make progress on this program, MaTCh will introduce novel mathematical methods, inspired by renormalization group approaches and grounded in the second quantization techniques developed by the P.I. and collaborators, valid on an increasing sequence of scales. Ultimately, the research led by MaTCh will lay the foundation for the rigorous description of several phenomena which are at the frontiers of present theoretical and experimental research, where collective excitations of quantum systems are described in terms of emergent Bose gases, such as in the BCS theory for superconductivity, the molecular description of strongly interacting Fermi gases, and the spin-wave theory for quantum magnetism.

Experimental astroparticle physics is currently one of the most vibrant and exciting areas of fundamental physics and in the coming decade there is a real potential to experimentally resolve two remaining big puzzles in our understanding of the Universe: the nature of dark matter (DM) and the Baryon Asymmetry of the Universe (BAU, i.e. why there is more matter than antimatter). We currently do not know what is the nature of 95% of the energy density of our Universe. Astronomical observations tell us that at least 23% of the unknown density should behave like matter – as we cannot see it, we call it dark matter. The exact nature of DM (and dark energy) is still unknown and its origin is at present one of the most important questions in physics. Particle physics beyond the Standard Model provides several candidate particles which could be the DM. Out of these, Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are the best motivated. Discovering them would be a major breakthrough and a sign of physics beyond the Standard Model. The DarkWave consortium aims to make key contributions towards this discovery by: (1) building DarkSide-20k, the next generation experiment searching for dark matter via elastic scattering of dark matter particles in liquid argon (LAr), with sensitivity two orders of magnitude beyond current searches at ~1 TeV/c2 WIMP mass, (2) developing new technologies for ARGO and DarkSide-LM, the ultimate detectors, able to probe the full parameter space where WIMPs can be found. It will also (3) exploit technological synergies with two other key areas in astroparticle physics: long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments (DUNE) and gravitational wave detection.

The lauda, a vibrant expression of popular piety, is the poetic-musical genre that from the second half of the twelfth century marked the birth and the spread of singing in the Italian language. It was based on melodies of varied origins, but mostly functional in orally conveying – through minstrels, lay confraternities and preachers – the dissemination of texts and (not only spiritual) concepts among a largely illiterate population. Despite this ‘volatility’, a good corpus of laude has been preserved in written form for ritual needs, sometimes with musical notation, forming an impressive repository of ‘frozen orality’. While realizing the importance and vastness of this heritage, scholars for over a century have been mainly engaged in alternatively considering it either from a literary or a musical point of view. Therefore, no systematic research has yet to shed light on the specific nature of the phenomenon, its dynamics of creation and transmission and all indicators that make it a reliable mirror of society, culture and mentality in medieval and early Renaissance Italy. The LAUDARE project aims to approach the Italian lauda in its intrinsic intermediality by collecting the whole corpus of texts handed down with music up to the mid 1500s and comprehensively exploring the dynamics of composition and transmission of poems and related tunes according to the mechanisms of orality. An open access database, making searchable the entire corpus, will allow wide-ranging surveys such as the territorial impact of a text and/or its musical setting as well as the diffusion of melodic patterns and text formulas. The results will be collected in a specific volume. Other expected outputs are a handbook, at least ten open access articles, three workshops and two international conferences with proceedings, one of which will have involved related disciplines such as medieval and religious history, linguistics, palaeography, iconography, anthropology, and urban studies.