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In the last 15 years the FRIBs@LNS facility has successfully produced Radioactive Ion Beams using the In-Flight technique. We report on the current status and future perspectives opened by FRAISE, a new fragment separator that will be build in connection with the upgrade of Superconducting Cyclotron of the INFN-LNS laboratories.

A broad range of Nuclear Physics research activities have been carried out at INFN-LNS until the summer 2020, when the accelerators were stopped for the upgrade. The upgrade of LNS is a project mainly funded by a PON-FESR (National Program for Research and Innovation) strategic line for boosting the research infrastructures, having its own goals, time-schedule and deadlines. In addition to such an action promoted by the Italian Ministry of Research, further funds have been made available from INFN budget. The end of the phase supported by the PON for procurement and tenders is currently set for the end of 2023. A series of actions will therefore be implemented to improve scientific opportunities for users. In particular, the focus is on the commissioning of the Tandem and Superconducting Cyclotron with the new set-up, completed by the renewal of the experimental areas and the commissioning of the new fragment separator FRAISE, also financed under the PON. The high-intensity program, including the determination of the nuclear matrix elements (NME) for the double beta decay and the study of EOS for nuclear matter with large neutron content, will be made feasible by these improvements to accelerators, beamlines and detectors. Some highlights of the whole activity as well as of the Applied Physics perspectives and the Astroparticle Physics multi-messenger program, strictly connected to the Nuclear Physics program, are given.

The NUMEN experiment at INFN-LNS demands an upgrade of the Superconducting Cyclotron (CS) to deliver beam with power up to 10 kW for ions with mass A < 40 amu. To transport these high power beams, it is mandatory to build a new extraction beam line from the CS and to upgrade the existing beam transport lines to maintain the beam losses below 100 W, both in the accelerator room and along the beam transport areas. Moreover, a new fragment in-flight separator will be built to produce radioactive ion beams, but also to perform energy selection of the beam extracted from the cyclotron, to be delivered to the MAGNEX spectrometer with an energy spread below 0.1% FWHM. The use of a 10 kW ion beam implies also to redesign of the beam transport line inside the MAGNEX experimental room to allow the installation of a new large and well shielded beam dump beyond the apparatus.

The γ-decays of 12C excited levels (the Hoyle state 0+ at 7.65 MeV and the 9.64 MeV 3) are essential for its production in the universe. We present here a new attempt to precisely measure such γ-decay probabilities. The measurement was performed at INFN-LNS in Catania using the 4π CHIMERA multidetector. In order to measure these low probability decay-channels we performed 4-fold coincidence measurements. The 12C target nuclei were excited by using a beam of 64 MeV α-particles produced by the Superconducting Cyclotron (CS) of INFN-LNS. The scattered α-particles and the 12C recoils were detected and identified by? E-E and ToF methods using CHIMERA telescopes. The two emitted γ-rays in the decay chain were detected and identified by using the second stage of the telescopes, CsI(Tl) scintillators, by means of fast-slow and rise time techniques. Kinematics and energy-momentum conservation laws were used to constrain the data analysis. Also the 3-α decay channel probability was measured. Such a simultaneous measurement of all known decay channels was useful to reduce the systematic errors. Preliminary results of the data analysis are reported.

The LNS Superconducting Cyclotron (CS) has been working for 20 years making a wide range of ions and energies available. Many experiments are performed each year. In the near future a major upgrade is planned. This will allow to overcome the major limitation of the CS, which is the beam power delivered to the users, that at present does not exceed 100 W. In the new version of the CS, the extracted beam power will be increased up to a factor 100. This improvement will be reached extracting by stripping a specific set of light ions and energies extracted by stripping. Nevertheless, the extraction through the two electrostatic deflectors, providing a beam power limited to 100 W, will be also maintained to fulfil the users requests. The new design could strongly affect the beam dynamics. The iron yoke penetrations do not respect the three folds symmetry of our cyclotron and have a complex shape, due to the double extraction methods and all services entrances. This inhomogeneity produces unwanted field harmonics, which have to be reduced as much as possible to avoid beam precession or second order effects. Here the study accomplished to minimize the perturbation of the non- three fold field symmetry using the current sheet approximation (CSA) is presented, along with the state-of-art configuration of the updated cyclotron.

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) can be immunosuppressive in humans and mice, and CLL cells share multiple phenotypic markers with regulatory B cells that are competent to produce interleukin (IL)-10 (B10 cells). To identify functional links between CLL cells and regulatory B10 cells, the phenotypes and abilities of leukemia cells from 93 patients with overt CLL to express IL-10 were assessed. CD5 + CLL cells purified from 90% of the patients were IL-10-competent and secreted IL-10 following appropriate ex vivo stimulation. Serum IL-10 levels were also significantly elevated in CLL patients. IL-10-competent cell frequencies were higher among CLLs with IgV H mutations, and correlated positively with TCL1 expression. In the TCL1-transgenic (TCL1-Tg) mouse model of CLL, IL-10-competent B cells with the cell surface phenotype of B10 cells expanded significantly with age, preceding the development of overt, CLL-like leukemia. Malignant CLL cells in TCL1-Tg mice also shared immunoregulatory functions with mouse and human B10 cells. Serum IL-10 levels varied in TCL1-Tg mice, but in vivo low-dose lipopolysaccharide treatment induced IL-10 expression in CLL cells and high levels of serum IL-10. Thus, malignant IL-10-competent CLL cells exhibit regulatory functions comparable to normal B10 cells that may contribute to the immunosuppression observed in patients and TCL1-Tg mice.

The investigation and development of new functional two-dimensional materials is one of the most important challenges for terahertz (THz) photonics and optoelectronics. These materials allow to dynamically manipulate the properties of the THz radiation. Graphene and graphene-based materials are the promising candidates for this task as they are efficient and fast-acting in the THz frequency range. In this work we have experimentally studied the properties of novel material based on few-layered graphene intercalated with ferric chloride (FeCl3-FLG) in the THz frequency range. In particular, the influence of infrared optical pumping intensity (using 980 nm continuous-wave (CW) laser) on the spectral properties of FeCl3-FLG was investigated. The experimental results have shown the efficiency of the suggested method of radiation characteristics control.

The tropical transport processes of 14 different models or model versions were compared, within the framework of the SCOUT-O3 (Stratospheric-Climate Links with Emphasis on the Upper Troposphere and Lower Stratosphere) project. The tested models range from the regional to the global scale, and include numerical weather prediction (NWP), chemical transport, and chemistry-climate models. Idealised tracers were used in order to prevent the model's chemistry schemes from influencing the results substantially, so that the effects of modelled transport could be isolated. We find large differences in the vertical transport of very short-lived tracers (with a lifetime of 6 h) within the tropical troposphere. Peak convective outflow altitudes range from around 300 hPa to almost 100 hPa among the different models, and the upper tropospheric tracer mixing ratios differ by up to an order of magnitude. The timing of convective events is found to be different between the models, even among those which source their forcing data from the same NWP model (ECMWF). The differences are less pronounced for longer lived tracers, however they could have implications for modelling the halogen burden of the lowermost stratosphere through transport of species such as bromoform, or short-lived hydrocarbons into the lowermost stratosphere. The modelled tracer profiles are strongly influenced by the convective transport parameterisations, and different boundary layer mixing parameterisations also have a large impact on the modelled tracer profiles. Preferential locations for rapid transport from the surface into the upper troposphere are similar in all models, and are mostly concentrated over the western Pacific, the Maritime Continent and the Indian Ocean. In contrast, models do not indicate that upward transport is highest over western Africa.