Inauguration of the new facilities of the CAPACITY Laboratory in Caserta
14 May 2025 – Today the new facilities of the CAPACITY laboratory in Caserta have been inaugurated.
The extension of the CAPACITY laboratory will allow for building, testing and integrating a large fraction of the KM3NeT digital optical modules, base modules and detection units, thus considerably speeding up the construction of the KM3NeT detectors. The laboratory is in fact equipped to facilitate all the integration steps which are necessary for building complete detection units and for preparing them in the packed configuration used for deployment.
In addition, the CAPACITY laboratory hosts sophisticated test facilities, including a state-of-the-art laboratory dedicated to the characterisation of optical sensors, a large tank for tests of digital optical modules in water, a large thermal chamber and more, allowing for extensive tests of different components to be carried out at the site. The CAPACITY laboratory also hosts the European Logistics Center of the Collaboration, where the components needed for detector construction are collected for distribution to the integration sites.
CAPACITY (Campania AstroPArtiCle InfrastrucTure facilitY) is a laboratory created in 2019 thanks to the joint action of the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) and the University of Campania “L. Vanvitelli”, within the Research Laboratories Centre (POLAR) of the Department of Mathematics and Physics of the University of Campania.
The new CAPACITY facilities have been made possible by the efforts of the institutions, the University of Campania “L. Vanvitelli” and the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics, in the framework of the NextGenerationEU Italian PNRR KM3NeT4RR project. With KM3NeT4RR, crucial actions towards the expansion of the KM3NeT Italian site off the coast of Capo Passero in Sicily have been funded. These include the extension of the submarine infrastructure and the strengthening of the detector integration laboratories and of its testing facilities.
Lucio Gialanella (left) and Pasquale Migliozzi (right), respectively the representative of University of Campania “L. Vanvitelli” and the CAPACITY director, at the inauguration time
Paul de Jong, KM3NeT Spokesperson
One of the new integration halls at CAPACITY (for DOM integration)
