XVIII Physics in Collision
Three-Day Plenary Session Conference

Frascati Laboratories at a Glance
 

The Frascati National Laboratories (LNF) are the oldest and largest of the INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare) laboratories.

They traditionally pursue research and development activities in the field of nuclear and particle physics with special emphasis on experiments in accelerators and storage rings. In fact the first e+e- storage ring, AdA (Anello di Accumulazione), was conceived and constructed in 1961 at the LNF.

After the pioneering era of ADONE at the end of the 1960's, which saw the birth of colliders and the observation of the first multihadronic events, the LNF again played a pioneering role in the present era of high-luminosity particle factories by constructing the first DAFNE, a double-annular e+e- PHY-factory devoted to precision measurements.

With the three experiments KLOE, FINUDA and DEAR, planned to exploit DAFNE collisions, the physics program of DAFNE covers an extremely wide range of topics, from CP violation in the kaon sector to the study of hypernuclei and kaonic-atom spectroscopy.

In a second phase DAFNE could also provide intense beams of synchrotron light in the UV and soft X-ray regions, thus continuing a long-standing tradition that began with ADONE.

The activities of the LNF also extend to other fields of great interest: an ultracryogenic resonant antenna, Nautilus, is housed inside the LNF and has been steadily taking data to search for gravitational waves for more than a year, setting a record of operation for such a large detector. The Frascati laboratories also give a solid contribution to a lot of the on-going research carried out in leading laboratories all over the world and perform advanced studies in the field of theoretical physics.

The DAFNE project is at a very advanced stage. On October 25 1997 the first beam was stored in the electron ring. Final commissioning aims to put DAFNE into operation at the beginning of 1998.