Division of systems engineering

Micromegas detectors were invented in 1996 at CEA to address the new challenges in tracking charged particles in the demanding conditions of emerging high-luminosity accelerators like the LHC. However, since the beginning, they found applications in various other domains such as rare event searches and neutron measurements. New Micromegas technologies allow the fabrication of detectors with enhanced performance, tailored to specific requirements. Other advancements enable the decoupling of these detectors from the readout, allowing the use of silicon chips or even optical cameras, thus opening new possibilities for imaging applications. The development of PICOSEC Micromegas boosts the timing precision of those detectors towards the level of 10~ps, making them candidates for future collider or neutrino experiments. The versatility of Micromegas, coupled with their reliability and robustness, led to the development of a novel system for beam instrumentation and machine protection in accelerators, based on neutron detection, effectively covering the low-energy part of linear accelerators, where no other system currently exists