Entrance of the officesMain lab interior, between Somport road tunnel and the old Canfranc railway tunnel.
The Canfranc Underground Laboratory (Spanish: Laboratorio Subterráneo de Canfranc or LSC) is an underground scientific facility located in the former railway tunnel of Somport under Monte Tobazo (Pyrenees) in Canfranc. The laboratory, 780 m deep and protected from cosmic radiation,[2] is mainly devoted to study rarely occurring natural phenomena such as the interactions of neutrinos of cosmic origin or dark matter with atomic nuclei.[3][1][4]
DArT, experiment to measure the radioactive activation of argon
TREX-DM, WIMP dark matter search experiment
NEXT, neutrinoless double beta decay experiment
CROSS, Cryogenic Rare-event Observatory with Surface Sensitivity, searching for neutrinoless double beta decay
SuperKGd (also known as SUPERK-GD or under similar names), experiment for mapping of background noise signal for the Super-Kamiokande neutrino telescope in Japan. There is a plan to operate the Super-Kamiokande detector with Gadolinium salt dissolved into the water-mass of the detector. This operation would introduce unknown backgrounds in the neutrino-detection process of Super-Kamiokande, and SuperK-Gd is mapping those backgrounds.
BabyIAXO, preparing the ground for the full infrastructure of the IAXO (International Axion Observatory) which is a new generation axion helioscope and its main goal is to detect axions (or other similar particles) potentially emitted by the Sun’s core in large quantities
GOLLUM, underground biology experiment
As of 2023, the following experiments were described as proposals:[8]
Multicellular structure formation in response to low level background radiation, a biology experiment
Microorganisms with enhanced DNA damage repair abilities, a biology experiment
Interaction between host and pathogens under low-radiation background, a biology experiment
THE MODERN-E PROJECT, a study of wireless transmission of geotechnical data through clay rocks. Through its works, it aims to achieve a wireless monitoring system capable of operating with the measurement instrumentation commonly used for monitoring the main geotechnical parameters that are relevant for the operation of the future nuclear waste repository
CADEX, the Canfranc Axion Detection Experiment
Luria-Delbrück 2.0, studying cosmic radiation to evaluate its possible role in the mutation rate of bacteria
Bacteria in heavy water, a biology experiment
NEXT-HD, the fourth phase of the NEXT program
NaI-CGF, this proposal aims to build and commission an underground facility to grow ultra-high radiopurity NaI(Tl) scintillators
HENSA, High Efficiency Neutron-Spectrometry Array
ARQ-Qubits, aims at developing a new technology to mitigate the effects of radiation on qubits
DAMIC, Dark Matter in CCDs, a dark matter detection experiment
LU, Low-level γ spectroscopy with High Purity Germanium (HPGe) detectors, a radiopurity experimemt
CUNA, an underground nuclear astrophysics facility
As of 2023, the following experiments have completed their activities in Canfranc:[9]
