Catalina Curceanu's research while affiliated with INFN - Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare and other places

Publications (92)

Article
The current work presents the optimization of large area Silicon Drift Detectors (SDDs) developed by the SIDDHARTA-2 collaboration for high precision X-ray measurements of light exotic atom transitions. Two different radiation sources were employed in the study: an X-ray tube, for investigating the energy resolution and the charge collection effici...
Article
The VIP-2 experiment performs a high sensitivity test of the Pauli Exclusion Principle for electrons, and is operated in the ultra-low cosmic background environment of the Gran Sasso Underground Laboratories of INFN. The experimental technique consists in testing the symmetry state of an open, continuously supplied, system of fermions; thus represe...
Article
The kaonic deuterium 2p→1s transition X-ray measurement, a fundamental information needed for a deeper understanding of the Quantum ChromoDynamics (QCD) in the strangeness sector, is still missing. The SIDDHARTA-2 collaboration is now ready to achieve this unprecedented result thanks to the dedicated experimental apparatus that will allow to obtain...
Article
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In this paper we perform a critical analysis of the Orch OR consciousness theory at the crossroad with the newest experimental results coming from the search for spontaneous radiation predicted by the simplest version of gravity-related dynamical collapse models. We conclude that Orch OR theory, when based on the simplest version of gravity-related...
Article
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Violations of the Pauli Exclusion Principle (PEP), albeit small, could be motivated by physics beyond the Standard Model, ranging from violation of Lorentz invariance to extra space dimensions. This scenario can be experimentally constrained through dedicated, state-of-the-art X-ray spectroscopy, searching for a forbidden atomic transition from the...
Article
The aim of the AMADEUS collaboration is to provide new experimental constraints to the antikaon-nucleon ([Formula: see text]) strong interaction in the regime of nonperturbative QCD, investigating the low-energy [Formula: see text] hadronic interactions with light nuclei like H, ⁴ He, ⁹ Be and [Formula: see text]C. The unique low-momentum kaon beam...
Preprint
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The objective of the proposed MAQRO mission is to harness space for achieving long free-fall times, extreme vacuum, nano-gravity, and cryogenic temperatures to test the foundations of physics in macroscopic quantum experiments. This will result in the development of novel quantum sensors and a means to probe the foundations of quantum physics at th...
Article
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The possible existence of deeply-bound $\bar K$-nuclear bound states, kaonic nuclei, has been widely discussed as products of the strongly attractive $\bar K$ N interaction in I = 0 channels. Investigations of those exotic states will provide us unique information of the $\bar K$ N interaction below the threshold, which is still not fully understoo...
Article
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The X-ray spectroscopy measurements of light kaonic atoms’ deexcitation towards the fundamental level provide unique information on the low-energy Quantum ChromoDynamics (QCD) in the strangeness sector, being a direct probe of the kaon/nucleon interaction at threshold, unobtainable through the scattering experiments. In this framework, the SIDDHART...
Article
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The aim of the AMADEUS experiment is to investigate the lowenergy antikaon interaction with nucleons and nuclei, exploiting the unique lowmomentum beam of kaons produced by the DAΦNE collider at LNF-INFN, to constrain hadronic nuclear physics models in the strangeness -1 sector. As a first step the data collected in 2004/2005 by the KLOE collaborat...
Article
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VIP-2 (VIolation of Pauli exclusion principle - 2) is an underground experiment sited in the underground “Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso.” It aims to investigate possible violations of the Pauli Exclusion Principle (PEP) and, in this context, Quantum Gravity models implying violations of PEP. While an upper limit of PEP violation probability i...
Article
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The VOXES collaboration at INFN National Laboratories of Frascati developed a prototype of a high resolution Von Hamos X-ray spectrometer using HAPG (Highly Annealed Pyrolytic Graphite) mosaic crystals. This technology allows the employment of extended isotropic sources and could find application in several physics fields. The capability of the spe...
Preprint
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In vivo assessment of cancer and precise location of altered tissues at initial stages of molecular disorders are important diagnostic challenges. Positronium is copiously formed in the free molecular spaces in the patient's body during positron emission tomography (PET). The positronium properties vary according to the size of inter- and intramole...
Article
The article reviews our recent experimental results on the Continuous Spontaneous Localization (CSL) model and on the gravity related collapse model developed by Diósi and Penrose (DP). These models of dynamical reduction of the wave function consist in non-linear and stochastic modifications of the Schröedinger equation, which lead to a progressiv...
Article
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A large-area silicon drift detectors (SDDs) system has been developed by the SIDDHARTA-2 collaboration for high precision light kaonic atom X-ray spectroscopy at the DAΦNE collider of Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare—Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati. The SDDs’ geometry and electric field configuration, combined with their read-out electronics,...
Preprint
A large-area Silicon Drift Detectors (SDDs) system has been developed by the SIDDHARTA2 collaboration for high precision light kaonic atoms X-ray spectroscopy at the DA{\Phi}NE collider of Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare - Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati. The SDDs geometry and electric field configuration, combined with their read-out electr...
Article
In vivo assessment of cancer and precise location of altered tissues at initial stages of molecular disorders are important diagnostic challenges. Positronium is copiously formed in the free molecular spaces in the patient’s body during positron emission tomography (PET). The positronium properties vary according to the size of inter- and intramole...
Article
Full-text available
We study spontaneous radiation emission from matter, as predicted by the Continuous Spontaneous Localization (CSL) collapse model. We show that, in an appropriate range of energies of the emitted radiation, the largest contribution comes from the atomic nuclei. Specifically, we show that in the energy range $$E\sim 10\,-\,10^{5}$$ E ∼ 10 - 10 5 keV...
Preprint
We study spontaneous radiation emission from matter, as predicted by the Continuous Spontaneous Localization (CSL) collapse model. We show that, in an appropriate range of energies of the emitted radiation, the largest contribution comes from the atomic nuclei. Specifically, we show that in the energy range $E\sim 10\,-\,10^{5}$ keV the contributio...
Article
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The purpose of the presented research is estimation of the performance characteristics of the economic Total-Body Jagiellonian-PET system (TB-J-PET) constructed from plastic scintillators. The characteristics are estimated according to the NEMA NU-2-2018 standards utilizing the GATE package. The simulated detector consists of 24 modules, each built...
Preprint
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The purpose of the presented research is estimation of the performance characteristics of the economic Total-Body Jagiellonian-PET system (TB-J-PET) constructed from plastic scintillators. The characteristics are estimated according to the NEMA NU-2-2018 standards utilizing the GATE package. The simulated detector consists of 24 modules, each built...
Article
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We study the emission of photons from germinating seeds using an experimental technique designed to detect light of extremely small intensity. We analyze the dark count signal without germinating seeds as well as the photon emission during the germination process. The technique of analysis adopted here, called diffusion entropy analysis (DEA) and o...
Article
The current work describes a method for dealing with an anomalous background observed in parallel to the signal of interest (X-rays or gammas) on spectroscopic Silicon Drift Detectors (SDD) arrays exposed to large fluxes of ionizing radiation. The increment could not be explained by the Monte Carlo simulation reproducing well the single SDD cell re...
Article
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The aim of the AMADEUS collaboration is to provide experimental information on the low-energy strong interaction of antikaons with nucleons, exploiting the absorptions of low momentum $$\hbox {K}^{-}$$ mesons ($$p_\mathrm {K} \sim$$ 127 MeV/c) produced at the $$\hbox {DA}\mathrm {\Phi }\hbox {NE}$$ collider, in the materials composing the KLOE det...
Preprint
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Charged lepton system symmetry under combined charge, parity, and time-reversal transformation (CPT) remains scarcely tested. Despite stringent quantum-electrodynamic limits, discrepancies in predictions for the electron–positron bound state (positronium atom) motivate further investigation, including fundamental symmetry tests. While CPT noninvari...
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Roger Penrose proposed that a spatial quantum superposition collapses as a back-reaction from spacetime, which is curved in different ways by each branch of the superposition. In this sense, one speaks of gravity-related wave function collapse. He also provided a heuristic formula to compute the decay time of the superposition—similar to that sugge...
Article
In this paper we report about the reflection efficiency measurements of the VOXES Von Hamos (VH) spectrometer, based on HAPG mosaic crystals, together with the ray tracing simulations results. Von...
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The VIP-2 collaboration runs an apparatus in the Gran Sasso underground laboratories of the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) designed to search for anomalous X-rays from electron-atom interactions due to violations of the fundamental antisymmetry of multi-electron wavefunctions. The experiment implements the scheme first proposed by Ram...
Article
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The VIP collaboration is performing high sensitivity tests of the Pauli Exclusion Principle for electrons in the extremely low cosmic background environment of the underground Gran Sasso National Laboratory INFN (Italy). In particular, the VIP-2 Open Systems experiment was conceived to put strong constraints on those Pauli Exclusion Principle viola...
Article
A new family of nonrelativistic, Newtonian, nonquantum equilibrium configurations describing galactic halos is introduced, by considering strange quark matter conglomerates with masses larger than about 8 GeV as new possible components of the dark matter. Originally introduced to explain the state of matter in neutron stars, such conglomerates may...
Chapter
We briefly report the recent results obtained by the AMADEUS collaboration on experimental studies of the K low-energy interactions with light nuclei and outline the future perspectives.
Conference Paper
The K¯NN bound system, symbolically denoted as “K⁻pp”, is the simplest K¯-nuclear bound system which has been widely discussed as a consequence of the strongly attractive K¯N interaction in I = 0 channels. Many theoretical works have pointed out the existence of the “K⁻pp” bound system, but the calculated properties such as the binding energy and t...
Preprint
Full-text available
A new family of nonrelativistic, Newtonian, non-quantum equilibrium configurations describing galactic halos is introduced, by considering strange quark matter conglomerates with masses larger than about 8 GeV as new possible components of the dark matter. Originally introduced to explain the state of matter in neutron stars, such conglomerates may...
Article
Full-text available
In this paper we report on the results of two analyses of the data taken with a dedicated VIP-Lead experiment at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory of the INFN. We use measurements taken in an environment that is especially well screened from cosmic rays, with a metal target made of “Roman lead” which is characterised by a low level of intrinsic ra...
Article
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Kaonic atoms measure the antikaon-nucleus interaction at almost zero relative energy, allowing one to determine basic low-energy quantum chromodynamics (QCD) quantities, namely, the antikaon-nucleon ( K ¯ N) scattering lengths. The latter are important for extracting the sigma terms which are built on the symmetry breaking part of the Hamiltonian,...
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The DAΦNE electron-positron collider of the Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati of INFN is a worldwide unique low-energy kaon source and for this reason is suitable for low-energy kaon physics like kaonic atoms and kaon-nucleons/nuclei interaction studies. Kaonic atoms are atomic systems where an electron is replaced by a negatively charged kaon, cont...
Article
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The excellent quality kaon beam provided by the DA \PhiΦ NE collider of LNF-INFN (Italy) together with SIDDHARTA/SIDDHARTA-2 new experimental techniques, as very precise and fast-response X-ray detectors, allow to perform unprecedented measurements on light kaonic atoms crucial for a deeper understanding of the low-energy quantum chromodynamics (QC...
Article
Collapse models consist in dynamical reformulations of the standard quantum mechanics aiming to solve the measurement problem. The standard Schrödinger dynamics is modified with the introduction of nonlinear and stochastic terms, which induce the wave function collapse in space. Collapse models predict slight deviations from the standard quantum me...
Chapter
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The AMADEUS collaboration aims to provide new experimental constraints to the $$K^{-}$$N strong interaction in the regime of non-perturbative QCD, exploiting low-energy $$K^{-}$$ hadronic interactions with light nuclei (e.g. H, $${}^{4}$$He, $${}^{9}$$Be and $${}^{12}$$C). The low-momentum kaons ($$p_{K}$$ $$\sim$$ 127 MeV/c) produced at the DA\(\...
Conference Paper
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Article
Bragg spectroscopy is a consolidated experimental method for high energy resolution X-ray measurements. However, this technique is limited to the detection of photons produced from point-like or well collimated sources...
Article
This review covers the modern era of experimental kaonic atom studies, encompassing 20 years of activity, defined by breakthroughs in technological developments which allowed performing a series of long-awaited precision measurements. Kaonic atoms are atomic systems where an electron is replaced by a negatively charged kaon, containing the strange...
Article
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The VIP-2 experiment aims to perform high precision tests of the Pauli Exclusion Principle for electrons. The method consists in circulating a continuous current in a copper strip, searching for the X radiation emission due to a prohibited transition (from the 2p level to the 1s level of copper when this is already occupied by two electrons). VIP a...
Article
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This article presents the kaonic atom studies performed at the INFN National Laboratory of Frascati (Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati dell’INFN, LNF-INFN) since the opening of this field of research at the DA Φ NE collider in early 2000. Significant achievements have been obtained by the DA Φ NE Exotic Atom Research (DEAR) and Silicon Drift Detecto...
Article
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Bragg spectroscopy, one of the best established experimental techniques for high energy resolution X-ray measurements, has always been limited to the measurement of photons produced from well collimated (tens of microns) or point-like sources; recently, the VOXES collaboration at INFN National Laboratories of Frascati developed a prototype of a hig...
Article
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Novel, large-area silicon drift detectors (SDDs) have been developed to perform precision measurements of kaonic atom X-ray spectroscopy, for the study the K ¯ N strong interaction in the low-energy regime. These devices have special geometries, field configurations and read-out electronics, resulting in excellent performances in terms of linearity...
Preprint
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We study the emission of photons from germinating seeds. We make the assumption that the germination process is a spontaneous transition to criticality and we show that the statistical analysis of the photon emission leads to a deviation from the ordinary processes of statistical physics compatible with that assumption. The method of statistical an...
Article
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A detection system of the conventional PET tomograph is set-up to record data from [Formula: see text] annihilation into two photons with energy of 511 keV, and it gives information on the density distribution of a radiopharmaceutical in the body of the object. In this paper we explore the possibility of performing the three gamma photons imaging b...
Article
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The novel whole-body PET system based on plastic scintillators is developed by the J-PET Collaboration. It consists of plastic scintillator strips arranged axially in the form of a cylinder, opening perspective for the cost-effective construction of the total-body PET. In order to determine properties of the scanner prototype and optimize its geome...
Article
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The VIolation of Pauli (VIP) experiment (and its upgraded version, VIP-2) uses the Ramberg and Snow (RS) method (Phys. Lett. B 1990, 238, 438) to search for violations of the Pauli exclusion principle in the Gran Sasso underground laboratory. The RS method consists of feeding a copper conductor with a high direct current, so that the large number o...
Article
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A positronium - a bound state of electron and positron - is an eigenstate of parity and charge conjugation operators which decays into photons. It is a unique laboratory to study discrete symmetries whose precision is limited, in principle, by the effects due to the weak interactions expected at the level of 10−14 and photon-photon interactions exp...
Article
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We briefly report on the search for Deeply Bound Kaonic Nuclear States with AMADEUS in the Sigma0 p channel following K- absorption on 12C and outline future perspectives for this work.
Article
By performing X-ray measurements in the “cosmic silence” of the underground laboratory of Gran Sasso, LNGS-INFN, we test a basic principle of quantum mechanics: the Pauli Exclusion Principle (PEP) for electrons. We present the achieved results of the VIP experiment and the ongoing VIP2 measurement aiming to gain two orders of magnitude improvement...
Article
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A novel plastic scintillator is developed for the application in the digital positron emission tomography (PET). The novelty of the concept lies in application of the 2-(4-styrylphenyl)benzoxazole as a wavelength shifter. The substance has not been used as scintillator dopant before. A dopant shifts the scintillation spectrum towards longer wavelen...