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Carlos Peña Garay, director of the Canfranc Underground Laboratory, has been elected new Chair of the APPEC General Assembly. His presidency will begin on 1 January 2025 and he will succeed Andreas Haungs. The Astroparticle Physics European Consortium (APPEC) represents the astroparticle physics community views in Europe’s decision-making process for the long-term future of the field. The General Assembly, formed by directors of major astroparticle physics...

Florian Jörg, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg and part of the XENON collaboration, has presented a novel technique to reduce radon emanation in materials used in rare event experiments. By using copper electrodeposition, they managed to reduce emanation rates in steel by over 1000 times with just a few microns of coating. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apradiso.2023.110666

Since last week, the LSC has a new cutting edge setup for reading scientific charge-coupled devices (CCDs) with an extraordinary capability: they can count electrons! This breakthrough brings us closer to the ambitious and fascinating goal of building a radio-purity service capable of detecting very low-energy radiation and the weakest signals. It is currently in the commissioning phase, where the equipment is being tested, but environmental background measurements are expected soon.

The 34th meeting of the LSC Scientific Advisory Committee took place on 21-22 May. The Committee heard presentations from the experiments: ANAIS, CROSS, NEXT and DAMIC and assessed the written reports of the rest of the experiments.

At the LSC we organise monthly seminars related to the different scientific and technical areas in which we work. Susana Cebrián, researcher of the CAPA group at the University of Zaragoza and expert in cosmogenic activation of materials, presented the results of her latest research. In this talk, she explained the importance of quantifying and controlling the radioactivity induced in materials by cosmic radiation, fundamental aspect for reducing the radioactive background in rare event experiments, such as those we host at the LSC .

A group of experts in biochemistry, microbiology and virology, in charge of evaluating the progress of the experiments and analysing new proposals in biology, met on Monday 29 April at the LSC. This evaluation committee will prepare the necessary evaluation report for the scientific committee to be held on 21 and 22 May in Canfranc.

El telescopio HK detectará neutrinos gracias a 22.000 tubos fotomultiplicadores (PMTs) colocados en el interior del tanque. Para evitar la posible ruptura en cadena de estos es esencial encontrar el diseño óptimo de una cubierta que absorba la onda explansiva que se produce tras la ruptura de un PMT.

On 6 March, the LSC held a Scientific Day. This time, it was aimed at science students in the 2nd year of Bachillerato from the high schools of Jaca. During this day, the students participated in different workshops and learned about the most commonly used techniques at the LSC, such as copper electroforming or gamma spectroscopy. The day ended with a visit to the underground facilities.

On 16 February, the planned onsite works of experiment PB-02-22: "Effect of low radiaction and microgravity on C.elegans infection" were completed. In this last round, staff from the Evolutionary Systems Virology group (I2SysBio) conducted assays to quantitatively study the effects of low radiation and microgravity on viral infection and intestinal permeability. Developmental changes between above- and under-ground populations were also studied.

The sixth implosion test campaign, led by the LSC and carried out at the SOCIB facilities (Mallorca), has recently been successfully completed. These campaigns aim to validate the viability of the protective covers of the sensors of the future HK telescope.