The nuclear structure and dynamics of nuclear reactions remain a topical problem, since there is no single model for their description. Exciting cases such as double beta decay, super heavy cores, and exotic cores are of global concern to the nuclear community. IFUNAM actively participates in various international projects, collaborating in the realization of new measures to unravel important properties of matter, still unknown. IFUNAM participates in the experiment NUMEN (Nuclear Matrix Elements for Neutrinoless double beta decay) of the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare of Italy. NUMEN intends to observe neutrino-free double beta decay, which would determine the Majorana or Dirac nature of neutrinos, their effective mass, and the non-conservation of the leptonic number. The collaboration involves more than 25 institutions around the world. The IFUNAM group participates in the implementation of measures in Italy, as well as as in the development of nuclear instrumentation. For the study of nuclear reactions of astrophysical interest, collaborations have been established with French and Italian groups to carry out measurements in laboratories such as LNS-INFN, Catania and ILL, France. Regarding the studies of the dynamics of the exotic nuclei, we collaborate intensively with groups of European institutions, for the realization of experimental measurements in laboratories such as GANIL (France), REX-ISOLDE -CERN (Switzerland), GSI (Germany) and the American laboratories of TwinSol (USA) and TRIUMF (Canada). For the development of nuclear instrumentation, IFUNAM has been carrying out the design of mechanical devices for detection systems such as the FARCOS array (Catania, Italy) for 4 years, in collaboration with scientists from the LNS and electronics specialists from the Milan Polytechnic.
For more than 10 years, at IFUNAM we have actively participated in international collaborations that carry out experiments with very low energy neutrons. These experiments provide relevant information in the analysis of fundamental problems, such as: the structure of the weak interaction between hadrons, the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the Universe, the possible existence of new interactions and of additional space-time dimensions and the nature of dark matter, among others. It participates in the following collaborations (i) NPDGamma, n-3He and Neutron Spin Rotation (NSR), which seek to improve our understanding of the weak hadronic interaction, by measuring the observables of the violation n of parity in hadronic processes. (ii) In the NSR collaboration, searches for spin-dependent exotic interactions between fermions are carried out at mesoscopic scales. (iii) The search for physical processes that violate the CP symmetry or that of time inversion and that could shed light on the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the Universe is the subject of study of the Neutron collaborations. Electric Dipole Moment (nEDM) and Neutron Optics Time Reversal Experiment (NOPTREX). (iv) Finally, we also participate in the Nab experiment, which seeks to determine the beta-neutrino correlation and distortions to the beta energy spectrum in the beta decay of free neutrons. These measurements, together with the precise determination of the neutron half-life, would serve as a consistency test of the three-family quark scheme of the standard model. In almost all cases, IFUNAM has contributed to the development of high precision electromagnetic devices for the transport and manipulation of the neutron spin.
