SHiP: a new facility to search for heavy neutrinos and study $\nu_\tau$ properties

SHiP (Search for Hidden Particles) is a newly designed fixed target facility, proposed at the CERN SPS accelerator, with the aim of complementing searches for New Physics at LHC by searching for light long-lived exotic particles with masses below a few GeV/c2. The sensitivity to Heavy Neutrinos will allow for the first time probing a region of the parameter space where Baryogenesis and active neutrino masses and oscillation could also be explained. A dedicated detector, based on OPERA-like bricks, will provide the first observation of the tau anti-neutrino. Moreover, $\nu_\tau$ and $\bar{\nu_\tau}$ cross-sections will be measured with a statistics 1000 times larger than currently available data and will allow extracting the F4 and F5 structure functions, never measured so far. Charm physics studies will be performed with signicantly improved accuracy with respect to past experiments.