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The Legnaro National Laboratories (LNL), born in 1961 as a nuclear research center of the University of Padua, became in 1968, few year after Frascati, the second laboratory of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN).
The LNL are mainly dedicated to experimental nuclear physics and astrophysics, in the field of nuclear structure and dynamics, where heavy ion induced reactions at medium-low energies are involved. Moreover, high level technologies for the construction of particle accelerators and experimental instruments and apparatuses are studied and developed.
The major activity of the laboratory is, at present, the construction of the SPES facility, a new research infrastructure devoted to the production of exotic beams for nuclear physics study and for new radioisotopes research and production for applications in nuclear medicine. The driver of SPES is an innovative cyclotron, B70, capable of providing high intensity proton beams (up to 750 uA) in the energy range between 35 and 70 MeV.
In the next period the Laboratory will be mainly engaged in the completion and the commissioning of the SPES facility: in a first phase low energy beams will be provided, mainly for beta-decay studies, followed by a second phase where the exotic beams will be re-accelerated by the ALPI Superconducting Linac.
At present, the arrival and installation of the AGATA gamma-ray spectrometer is allowing to perform, even in conjunction with the PRISMA magnetic spectrometer, new and important experimental campaigns with the stable beams supplied by the TANDEM-ALPI-PIAVE accelerator complex and, in the next future, with the SPES radioactive beams (RIBs).
The Laboratories are also involved in important international accelerator development projects, such as IFMIF-EVEDA, for which the RFQ system for the research and qualification of advanced materials for fusion reactors was constructed, installed and commissioned at Rokkasho (Japan), and ESS for the construction of the Linac Drift Tube, fundamental part of the European Spallation Neutron Source in Lund, Sweden. Further accelerator development projects are undergoing.
Among the important infrastructures that LNL can offer are also worth mentioning the computer center at TIER2 level, mainly in support of the activities of the large ALICE and CMS experiments, and some high-tech laboratories for the deposition of thick and thin films and for the ultra-cleaning of materials for accelerator and detector developments.
These technological skills allow LNL to collaborate also in neutrino physics experiments (CUORE/CUPID/T2K) and on the search for dark matter (search for axions with QUAX), with quantum sensing activities.
The present opportunities offered by LNL will be presented, together with the future challenges mainly deriving from the operation of SPES. This is aimed at encouraging and expanding all possible international collaborations, continuing being a training and attraction center for every generation of scientists.