The KM3NeT4RR project in Bologna

Abstract

KM3NeT4RR is a project for the Kilometre Cube Neutrino Telescope (KM3NeT), which is a large European research infrastructure composed of two underwater large-scale neutrino telescopes, ARCA and ORCA, located in the Mediterranean Sea off-shore Portopalo di Capo Passero (Sicily, Italy) and Toulon (Provence, France) respectively. The telescopes are mainly designed for studying cosmic neutrinos and neutrino properties, but the observatory infrastructure also offers opportunity for geological and marine sciences research, providing instrumentation connections for long-term, high-bandwidth and continuous data collection. The KM3NeT4RR project, led by the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, has started at the end of 2022 and during the following 30 months it includes a set of activities aimed at extending the ARCA seafloor network and the Italian on-shore facilities, building and operating an additional significant number of detection elements, thus significantly advancing the final completion of the infrastructure. Within this project, the KM3NeT laboratories present at the INFN-Bologna section are going to be expanded and a new setup will be created that will serve for both the detectors calibration studies and for deep-sea environmental research.