What next at LNF: Perspectives of physics research at the Frascati National Laboratories

The Frascati National Laboratories (LNF) are the oldest and largest research infrastructure of INFN, mainly devoted to the research in nuclear and particle physics, to the development of particle accelerators and frontier studies on new acceleration techniques. LNF is the place where the first electron-positron collisions were obtained in the early 60s. Presently LNF operates two accelerator complexes: DAFNE, an e+e- collider with center of mass energy set to the mass of the Φ meson, 1020 MeV. SPARC, a high intensity photoinjector capable of delivering electron beams up to 200 MeV, combined with a high power laser (FLAME), able to produce ultra short pulses, in the so called SPARC_LAB facility. The laboratory hosts also the NAUTILUS gravitational waves resonant bar detector, and thanks to the availability of several infrastructures, workshops, clean rooms etc.., it is also widely used as a facility for constructing large particle detectors used in other laboratories. The purpose of the present document is to address the question: is there a viable program on the development of internal activities which can allow the Laboratory to maximally exploit its capabilities and to maintain its role at the forefront of scientific research in the next decade? In particular, given the present Italian financial situation, is this possible by wisely upgrading the presently running infrastructures at moderate costs? On November 10-11, 2014 a workshop was held at LNF with the aim to discuss the above issues, with a broad participation of researchers from Italian and foreign institutions. A second workshop dedicated to the applications of the existing facilities to Materials Science was held on February 26-27, 2015. This document tries to summarize the main conclusions of these discussions.