Giuseppe Pietro

LNGS-INFN

The Gran Sasso National Laboratory (LNGS) is one of four INFN national laboratories. It is the largest underground laboratory in the world for experiments in particle physics, particle astrophysics and nuclear astrophysics. It is used as a worldwide facility by scientists, presently 750 in number, from 22 different countries, working at about 15 experiments in their different phases. It is located between the towns of L'Aquila and Teramo, about 120 km from Rome. The underground facilities are located on a side of the ten kilometres long freeway tunnel crossing the Gran Sasso Mountain. They consist of three large experimental halls, each about 100 m long, 20 m wide and 18 m high and service tunnels, for a total volume of about 180,000 cubic metres. The average 1400 m rock coverage gives a reduction factor of one million in the cosmic ray flux; moreover, the neutron flux is thousand times less than on the surface, thanks to the smallness of the Uranium and Thorium content of the dolomite rocks of the mountain.