SHiP(Search for Hidden Particles)
SHiP is a new general-purpose experiment being prepared at CERN's Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) facility, together with a new Beam Dump Facility. Its main objective is to search for "hidden" particles, proposed by numerous theoretical models that try to explain as yet unresolved phenomena such as dark matter, neutrino oscillations and the origin of the asymmetry between matter and antimatter in the Universe.
This experiment is designed to detect particles with long half-lives and very weak interactions, such as heavy neutral leptons, dark photons, dark scalars, axion-like particles and light supersymmetric particles (such as sgoldstinos), as well as various light dark matter candidates.
Thanks to the high intensity of the 400 GeV proton beam of the SPS, which produces a large number of charm mesons and photons, SHiP will be able to perform a comprehensive search for this type of particles in the MeV-GeV energy range and across a wide range of couplings.
The detector will have two complementary subsystems: one to detect visible decays of hidden particles and the other to record recoil scattering signals from electrons or nuclei. In addition, this facility is ideal for studying tau neutrino interactions, an area still little explored in neutrino physics.
In this international effort, the participation of scientists and technicians from the Millennium Institute SAPHIR (Chile), who actively contribute through various lines of collaboration, stands out. Among them is the joint work with the SND@SHiP collaboration, the development of the TOF (Time-of-Flight) system in cooperation with the University of Zurich, and the collaboration in the radiation control group with CCHEN (Chilean Nuclear Energy Commission). In addition, SAPHIR promotes a technician program that allows the training and direct participation of Chilean professionals in this frontier of particle physics research.