Our mission

NUM is the organisational home base for the research at PSI, which is based on the use of the PSI High Power proton accelerator and which spans the whole range from particle physics via solid, liquid or soft condensed matter science, chemistry, materials science and engineering to cultural heritage.

Among current topical scientific problems we specifically focus on those that are within the mission of PSI and optimally exploiting the state of the art instruments at our large scale facilities:

• the Swiss Spallation Neutron Source SINQ,
• the Swiss Muon Source SµS.

The Department is organised in five research laboratories:

• LTP – the Laboratory for Particle Physics,
• LNS – the Laboratory for Neutron Scattering,
• ASQ – the Spallation Source Division,
• LMU – the Laboratory for Muon Spin Spectroscopy and
• LDM – the Laboratory for Development and Methods

Furthermore there are two groups:

• CMT – the Condensed Matter Theory group
• the PSI User Office.

The NUM department is responsible for operating SINQ and the Ultracold Neutron Source UCN, for the development of instrumentation at SINQ and SµS and for the testing materials and target technologies for proton accelerator driven systems. The facilities in the NUM Department are open to international access – with 1300 annual visits the associated user program is a key activity in the Department. The PSI User Office manages the large number of foreign visitors to all PSI facilities.