Andrea Celentano, researcher at the Genoa section of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics and adjunct professor at the University of Genoa, received a "Startin Grant" ERC (European Research Council) with the "POKER", "POsitron resonant annihilation into darK mattER ".

The project, approved for 5 years starting from December 2020 with a funding of about 1.5 M €, will investigate a new approach for the search for light dark matter, using the high-energy positron beam available at CERN collided with a thick target. .

The detector is the target itself, of the active type: by measuring the difference between the energy deposited in the target and that of the beam, any negative value would attest to the production of dark matter particles, which "escaping" from the detector brings with it a significant part of the available energy