Mar 28, 2024
Magnetars are neutron stars displaying the most intense magnetic fields observed in the Universe. To tackle the still-open question of the origin of these extreme magnetic fields, a scenario was proposed by a team from the Department of Astrophysics (DAp) at CEA Saclay, invoking the Tayler-Spruit dynamo mechanism, triggered by matter falling onto the young neutron star after the supernova explosion.
Mar 20, 2024
A few layers of water ice - with the width of a DNA strand - are beginning to affect Euclid's vision; a common issue for spacecraft in the freezing cold of space, but a potential problem for this highly sensitive mission that requires remarkable precision to study the nature of the dark Universe. After months of research, Euclid's teams across Europe, including CEA-Saclay, have devised a new procedure designed to defrost the mission's optics, which involves independently heating the mirrors.
Mar 05, 2024
After being awarded the 2020 Tate Prize for International Leadership in Physics, astrophysicist Dr. Catherine Cesarsky is honored with another prestigious award: the 2024 Fritz Zwicky Prize in Astrophysics & Cosmology for her outstanding contributions to understanding galaxy evolution through infrared space observations, as well as for her leadership in developing contemporary astronomy observation infrastructure.
Feb 28, 2024
XMM-Newton's energetic universe joins forces with the Euclid satellite's vision of the sky. A thousand hours of X-ray observations, over a region 40 times the size of the moon, will complement multi-wavelength studies of the cosmic evolution of galaxy clusters. A decisive association to constrain cosmological scenarios and reveal the nature of dark energy.
Feb 15, 2024
Sara Bolognesi, a physicist in Irfu's particle physics department, has been awarded the CNRS 2024 silver medal in the particle physics speciality. This medal rewards researchers for the originality, quality and importance of their work, which is recognised internationally and contributes to the reputation of French research. 
Feb 12, 2024
With more than 5,000 scientists, engineers, technicians, administrators and students, CMS is one of the largest scientific collaborations in the world. With members from more than 240 institutes and universities in nearly 50 countries around the world, the collaboration exploits the data provided by the CMS experiment, one of the two giant general-purpose detectors installed along the circumference of the LHC, CERN's Large Hadron Collider.
Feb 08, 2024
Exotic, very neutron-rich nuclei: a laboratory for nuclear interactions
For the first time, an experiment has provided key observations on the spectroscopy of the neutron-rich unbound oxygen nuclei (proton number Z = 8), oxygen 28 (N = 20) and its neighboring isotope at N = 19, oxygen 27.  They were produced in high-energy reactions and observed by direct detection of their decay products, 24O and three or four neutrons.
Jan 25, 2024
ESA's Scientific Program Committee has adopted the LISA mission, giving the go-ahead for construction of the instrument and satellites. For the first time, LISA will observe the Universe through gravitational waves from space.
ISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna), the European Space Agency's large-scale mission to explore the Universe by observing the many sources of gravitational waves, was adopted on Thursday January 25 by ESA's Scientific Programs Committee, meaning that the concept and technology are recognized as sufficiently advanced for construction of the instrument and satellites to begin. Launch is scheduled for 2035.
Jan 22, 2024
The James Webb Space Telescope has produced a new portrait of the atmosphere of exoplanet WASP-39b, a "hot Saturn" some 700 light-years away. After the first near-infrared observations in 2022, which revealed for the first time the presence of sulfur dioxide (SO2) in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, it was observed again in 2023, but this time in the far infrared, using the MIRI spectrometer.
Jan 22, 2024
A comprehensive revision of the summation method lays new and solid foundations for the calculation of antineutrino spectra emitted by a nuclear reactor. This major advance sheds new light on the origin of the reactor antineutrino anomalies, and will be
Supported by CEA's "digital simulation" cross-disciplinary program, Irfu, the Laboratoire National Henri Becquerel of DRT and the Service d'Étude des Réacteurs et de Mathématiques Appliquées of DES teamed up to carry out a thorough review of calculations of antineutrino spectra from nuclear reactors.
Jan 17, 2024
To unravel this mystery, several teams with diverse skills from the Astrophysics Department had to come together, as the architecture that unites the star to its planet is highly complex. They had to combine a detailed understanding of stellar and planetary physics, exploring their interactions, with a thorough knowledge of the observations made by NASA's Kepler satellite to be able to decipher the data.
Dec 21, 2023
NewAthena, a pioneering X-ray observatory, will enable us to make major scientific progress in our understanding of the hot and energetic universe.
On November 8, 2023, ESA's Science Program Committee (SPC) approved the evolution of the Athena (Advanced Telescope for High-Energy Astrophysics) mission, now named NewAthena, and confirmed its status as the flagship mission of ESA's Cosmic Vision program. Positioned as a pioneer in X-ray astrophysics for the coming decades, NewAthena will enable the astronomical community to make major scientific advances in our understanding of the hot, energetic universe.
Dec 18, 2023
Barbara Perri, an astrophysicist at Irfu's Astrophysics Department and an expert in space weather, has been awarded an ANR contract for the WindTRUST project, which aims to predict solar activity in order to protect against it. The WindTRUST project is based on improved numerical simulations of the environment between the Sun and Earth, in particular the still poorly understood link between the Sun's magnetic atmosphere and its fast-moving wind of energetic particles.
Dec 08, 2023
The PEPR Suprafusion, proposed by the CEA and the CNRS, is the winner of the third wave of calls for
The PEPR Suprafusion (Priority Equipment Programme for Exploratory Research), proposed by CEA and CNRS, is the winner of the third wave of calls for projects under the France 2030 plan. The €50 million funding will enable the development of high-temperature superconductors to meet tomorrow's energy and societal challenges, particularly with applications in the field of fusion.
Dec 06, 2023
Engineers from Irfu's Division of Systems Engineering (DIS), co-managers of several EPICS sub-projects, took part in a particularly rewarding "Document-athon" experience, both technically and humanely. EPICS is a collection of open-source software tools for managing the control-system part of an experiment. This is a vast and complex subject, which is constantly evolving and therefore needs to be properly documented. This documentation effort requires a lot of resources.
Nov 27, 2023
The majority of the 3400 known pulsars are "seen" in radio waves, and are located in the Milky Way. The 340 pulsars seen in gamma-rays all share the common feature of being among the 10-15% most powerful pulsars.
An international team led by French researchers, including those at DAp, publishes on November 28, 2023 in the Astrophysical Journal a compilation of 340 pulsars seen in gamma rays (30 MeV - 30 GeV) with the LAT space telescope on NASA's Fermi satellite. Prior to Fermi's launch in 2008, only 11 pulsars were known in gamma rays. This new catalog brings together all the characteristics of all known gamma-ray pulsars.
Nov 27, 2023
IRFU successfully qualified the medium-energy line delivered to Soreq in 2020 after just a few hundred hours of beam, and delivered the first cryomodule for the future linear accelerator.
Thanks to the expertise developed by the CEA during the SPIRAL2 and IFMIF projects, in 2014 the CEA signed a contract with the Soreq Nuclear Research Centre (SNRC, Israel) to build a superconducting linear accelerator called SARAF (Soreq Applied Research Accelerator Facility). The aim is to build an accelerator capable of delivering proton and deuteron beams with energies ranging from 5 to 40 MeV and intensities of up to 5 mA.
Nov 22, 2023
ExoMagnets aims to develop new theories and high-performance simulations using future exascale computing infrastructures in order to exploit existing and future observations of the magnetism of distant exoplanets.
Antoine Strugarek, an astrophysicist in Irfu's Astrophysics Department, has been awarded an ERC Consolidator contract. The core of his ExoMagnets project is to understand the magnetic coupling between an exoplanet and its star, and therefore the magnetic field of exoplanets, which is crucial for the habitability of a planet.
Nov 15, 2023
The consortium of laboratories that has developed the MIRI instrument for the JWST is benefiting from guaranteed observation time. The CEA's Astrophysics Department, which is part of the consortium, has defined and coordinated the exoplanet observation programme. Among the objects selected are a number of brown dwarfs, which are excellent proxies for studying giant exoplanets, particularly those that orbit far from their star, much further away than the planets in our solar system.
Nov 15, 2023
EIC is a future electron-ion collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) that will probe the internal structure of nucleons and nuclei with unprecedented precision.
The CEA and the DOE have a long and fruitful collaboration in many fields, including fusion, high-energy physics and nuclear physics, with ongoing projects bringing the two organisations together in these different areas. On Monday 13 November 2023, CEA and DOE signed a “statement of interest” to strengthen their collaboration in accelerator and detector science and technology in preparation for the construction of the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) based at Brookhaven National Laboratory.  
Nov 15, 2023
The collaboration has finalised a detailed background model offering the lowest index ever obtained, and has also adopted a new technology: NTL light detectors, which are much more effective at rejecting background noise.
Neutrino oscillations have confirmed that these mysterious particles have mass, contradicting the predictions of the Standard Model. The DPhP group at CEA/IRFU is seeking to solve this mystery by observing the very rare double-beta decay without neutrino emission of the Mo-100 nucleus using scintillating bolometers. Following the CUPID-Mo demonstration experiment at the Modane underground laboratory, the group has finalised a detailed background model that offers high precision for studying the 2v2β decay.
Nov 15, 2023
An international team, led by astrophysicists from CEA, has observed the passage of exoplanet Wasp-107b in front of its star, with the aim of characterizing its atmosphere.
An international team of scientists, led by the Astrophysics Department of the CEA, has observed for the first time the swollen atmosphere of the exoplanet WASP-107b in the mid-infrared using the James Webb Space Telescope. While water vapor has indeed been detected, it is accompanied by sulfur dioxide (SO2) and silicate clouds (resembling sand clouds), rather than methane (CH4) as models predicted.
Nov 08, 2023
ESA has selected THESEUS, a mission dedicated to the transient and multi-messenger Universe, for a feasibility study for its next medium sized mission. IRFU will play a leading role in this, with the responsibility for the IRT telescope.
ESA has selected the THESEUS (Transient High Energy Sky and Early Universe Surveyor) mission as a medium-sized mission candidate. THESEUS is the natural successor to the Sino-French SVOM (Space based astronomical Variable Object Monitor) mission, which will be launched early 2024 (for 5 years of operation) and in which IRFU is also playing a leading role.
Nov 07, 2023
This series of five images demonstrates the satellite's exceptional performance for its cosmological mission!
To reveal the influence of the dark components of the Universe, over the next six years Euclid will be observing the shapes, distances and movements of billions of galaxies. This mapping will cover periods going back to the last 10 billion years of cosmic history, in order to gain a better understanding of where, when and how dark energy and matter - two key components of the universe that are still a mystery - act.
Oct 24, 2023
Study of the second-brightest gamma-ray burst ever observed reveals tellurium, an element rarer than platinum on Earth
An international team of scientists, including a researcher from Irfu's Astrophysics Department, used several space and ground-based telescopes, including the James Webb Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, to observe an exceptionally bright gamma-ray burst detected on March 7, 2023, GRB 230307A, and identify the neutron star merger that generated the explosion responsible for the burst.
Oct 10, 2023
For the 17th edition of the Prix Jeunes Talents France, the L'Oréal Foundation rewarded 35 brilliant young female researchers in France, selected from 618 eligible applications by a jury of excellence comprising 32 researchers from the French Academy of Sciences. At Irfu's Astrophysics Department, Achrène Dyrek received the award for physics. Achrène Dyrek has just obtained her PhD in astrophysics.
Sep 26, 2023
Fermi-LAT telescope continues systematic γ-ray survey NASA's Fermi satellite was launched in June 2008, and the Fermi-LAT telescope has been carrying out a systematic γ-ray survey of near-GeV energies covering most of the sky every 3 hours (and the whole sky in no more than a week) since August 2008.
Sep 26, 2023
Le télescope Fermi-LAT poursuit son relevé systématique en rayons γ Le satellite Fermi de la NASA a été lancé en juin 2008, et le télescope Fermi-LAT effectue un relevé systématique en rayons γ d’énergies proches du GeV couvrant la majorité du ciel toutes les 3 heures (et tout le ciel en au plus une semaine) depuis août 2008.
Sep 05, 2023
Discovery of the fossil of an acoustic wave from the original plasma of the Universe
The question of our place in the Universe - "where are we in the Universe?" - is a fascinating one, and the source of one of the oldest sciences: Cosmography, the mapping of the Cosmos.
Jul 31, 2023
Euclid's two instruments have captured their first test images. These fascinating results indicate that the space telescope will achieve the scientific objectives for which it was designed, and perhaps even more.
The Euclid satellite, launched from Cape Canaveral on July 1st, is traveling to reach its orbit at the second Lagrange point, which it should reach in early August. This transit time has been used to commission Euclid, checking the satellite's services such as communications, power, and pointing, and then the two instruments, VIS and NISP, as well as fine-tuning the telescope's focus.

 

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