Welcome to NPAT – the CNRS International Research Lab, located at TRIUMF

Latest news:

May 13-15, 2025: Tracking the BeEST

TRIUMF has just hosted the BeEST collaboration meeting, gathering researchers from the US, Canada, Portugal and France, including the LPC-Caen, which is part of the recently created International Research Laboratory with TRIUMF.
BeEST (Beryllium Electron capture in Superconducting Tunnel junctions) is probing for “new” physics i.e. beyond the Standard Model, specifically focusing on the process of electron capture in beryllium-7 to investigate the existence of sterile neutrinos.
The beta-decaying beryllium-7 nuclei are produced at TRIUMF’s ISAC facility and implanted into the superconducting tunnel-junction (STJ) detectors, which offer an unparalleled sensitivity for measuring the energy of the recoiling lithium-7 daughter, yielding access to the momentum of the emitted neutrino due to the entanglement of the 2 particles in the final state.

In addition to the search for sterile neutrinos, the BeEST experiment can probe quantum properties of the active neutrinos. Just last February , BeEST published a major result on the neutrino wavepacket, in Nature magazine: https://www.nature.cm/articles/s41586-024-08479-6
This novel application of STJs has opened many new possibilities, among them the ASGARD project of Leendert Hayen at LPC-Caen, for their use at GANIL’s new DESIR low-energy radioactive beam facility.
Hayen’s group at LPC-Caen has also established a pilot project to study the material-dependent effects in STJ devices to investigate the feasibility of Auger spectroscopy for medical use in collaboration with A. Lennarz at TRIUMF and the material science group at UBC.
For more details, see the BeEST homepage: https://beest.mines.edu/

March 27, 2025: First NPAT-sponsored physics colloquium given at TRIUMF by Dr. Nigel Orr (from the IN2P3 laboratory LPC-Caen) entitled: “Explorations Across the Neutron Dripline”

Renown pedagogue, N.A. Orr, waxing unboundedly neutronic to a rapturous audience at TRIUMF last March.

Nigel Orr (right) enjoying fruitful discussions with TRIUMF’s Science Division Director, Ritu Kanungo (middle, right) and TIGRESS physicist Greg Hackman (middle, left) while IRL Director D. Lunney (left) artfully snaps the selfie.

March 20, 2025: Former IN2P3 Director, Reynald Pain, who now directs the Centre Pierre Binétruy, a CNRS IRL at University of California at Berkeley, visited the newly created NPAT IRL in Vancouver for discussions with the TRIUMF Directorate.

(left to right): Rituparna Kanungo, Director of TRIUMF’s Science Division, Nigel Smith, TRIUMF CEO, Reynald Pain, Berkeley IRL director, David Lunney, NPAT Director