Eur. Phys. J. C (2020) 80: 508
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-020-8040-5

Regular Article - Experimental Physics

Search for a remnant violation of the Pauli exclusion principle in a Roman lead target

¹ Centro Fermi-Museo Storico della Fisica e Centro Studi e Ricerche “Enrico Fermi”, 00184, Rome, Italy
² INFN-Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati, Via Enrico Fermi 40, 00044, Frascati, Italy
³ Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Trieste and INFN-Sezione di Trieste, Trieste, Italy
⁴ Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria and INFN Sezione di Milano, Milan, Italy
⁵ Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università di Bologna, Bologna, Italy
⁶ IFIN-HH, Institutul National pentru Fizica si Inginerie Nucleara Horia Hulubei, Magurele, Romania
⁷ Stefan-Meyer-Institute for subatomic physics, Austrian Academy of Science, Wien, Austria
⁸ Institut de Physique, Université de Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland
⁹ Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, INFN, L’Aquila, Italy
¹⁰ Institut für Hochenergiephysik der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien, Austria
¹¹ Excellence Cluster “Origin and Structure of the Universe”, 85748, Garching, Germany

^* e-mail: raffaele.delgrande@lnf.infn.it

Received: 4 November 2019
Accepted: 10 May 2020
Published online: 6 June 2020

Abstract

In this paper we report on the results of two analyses of the data taken with a dedicated VIP-Lead experiment at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory of the INFN. We use measurements taken in an environment that is especially well screened from cosmic rays, with a metal target made of “Roman lead” which is characterised by a low level of intrinsic radioactivity. The analyses lead to an improvement, on the upper bounds of the Pauli Exclusion Principle violation for electrons, which is more than one (four) orders of magnitude, when the electron-atom interactions are described in terms of scatterings (or close encounters) respectively.