On June 18th, members of the Institute of Corpuscular Physics (a joint center of the CSIC and the University of Valencia), together with other members of the KM3NeT collaboration, established in Brussels the International Non-Profit Association (or AISBL, from its French acronym) KM3NeT-AISBL. This AISBL provides KM3NeT with a legal entity recognized at the international level.

The KM3NeT experiment is a European research infrastructure located on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of two underwater telescopes designed to detect and study neutrinos originating from very distant astrophysical sources, as well as neutrinos generated in our own atmosphere, contributing significantly to both astrophysics and particle physics.

The AISBL structure was considered the most appropriate for KM3NeT after an evaluation carried out within the European KM3NeT-Infradev2 project, in which the VEGA group from IFIC (Valencia Experimental Group of Astroparticles) participates. Within the work package dedicated to establishing this legal entity in KM3NeT-Infradev2, Francisco Salesa serves as the Principal Investigator on the Spanish side, with Juan de Dios Zornoza acting as the IFIC representative.

Having its own legal entity is one of the requirements for a European scientific infrastructure to become an "ESFRI Landmark" (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures), a status to which KM3NeT aspires. This new entity will enable more efficient organization within KM3NeT in terms of construction, installation, maintenance, and scientific operation of the infrastructure.

The AISBL was signed by Nicolas Leroy, Ekaterini Tzamariudaki, Juan de Dios Zornoza (on behalf of the Rector of the University of Valencia), Marco Pallavicini, and Jorgen D’Hondt, representing the founding members of the AISBL, respectively: CNRS (France), INPP/NCSRD (Greece), University of Valencia (Spain), INFN (Italy), and NWO-I (Netherlands).

As Juan de Dios Zornoza notes, “It is very good news that IFIC (through the participation of the University of Valencia) is a founding member of the KM3NeT AISBL, as it sends a clear message about Spain's commitment to this collaboration, in which it has been involved since the beginning.”

Other KM3NeT institutes are expected to join soon.