The Italian Minister for Instruction, University and Research, Mariastella Gelmini announced today that the long-term funding of the SuperB Factory was appproved by the Italian government. The project, sponsored by the National Institute of Nuclear Physics is one of 14 flagship projects of the National Plan for Research in Italy.

The Italian Minister for Instruction, University and Research, Mariastella Gelmini announced today that the Interministerial Committee for Economic Programming (CIPE) of the Italian government approved the funding of the SuperB Factory, sponsored by the National Institute of Nuclear Physics. CIPE approved the National Research Plan 2011-2013 which sets out the future direction of the 14 flagship projects, including the SuperB accelerator. This ratification further strengthens the project, which aims to build a new research facility in Italy for globally important science.

Reconstructing the history of the Universe by researching the most infrequent events using high-precision technology. This is the INFN idea underlying the construction of SuperB, the particle accelerator based in Italy and with international involvement, which the Italian government has decided to sponsor and finance. Many countries have expressed an interest in the project, meanwhile physicists from the United States, Germany, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, Israel, Canada, Norway, Spain, Poland are taking part in the design effort. The project will enable top-level basic research, developing innovative techniques with an important impact in terms of technology and other research areas.

Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) is cooperating on the project with INFN. It will be in fact possible to use the accelerator as a high-brilliance light source. The machine will be equipped with several photon channels, allowing the extension of scientific program to physics of matter and biotechnology.

The SuperB project uses the assumption that particle accelerators, smaller than the current 'giants', operated at a low energy, can enable excellent scientific results complementary to the high energy frontier. The crucial element consists in getting particle beams - which are extremely compact, small, short and very dense - to collide. SuperB is expected to increase the current number of reactions produced in the same unit of time in the laboratory by a factor of 100. In this way, through the study of very rare processes, which cause the decay of particles that are already known, it should be possible to detect minute effects not mentioned in the theories.

The quantum leap by SuperB is based on ideas developed in Italy and tested by the accelerator division of the National Laboratories of INFN in Frascati using the machine called Dafne. More specifically, the intersection of the beams at an angle is one of the strengths of the project because it allows a set of particles not to follow exactly the same path as those moving in the opposite direction, avoiding unwanted interference.

Flavor physics, the detailed understanding of the relationship between these families and the comparison between properties of matter and antimatter, is one of the most promising ways to explore new physics, quite complementary to the energy frontier research most notably pursued at the CERN LHC collider. Different kinds of new physics have different effects on rare decays of bottom and charmed quarks and of heavy tau leptons. These particles are all produced at SuperB in abundance, making it possible to take the precise measurements required to be sensitive to the details of new physics uncovered at CERN - for the very first time.

SuperB is expected to have a technological impact in terms of Biology, Chemistry, the environment, Microelectronics, Diagnostics and medical applications, Innovative materials, Nanotechnologies and Cultural Heritage.

Source: INFN Website