Feb 28, 2023
CEA has delivered the flight version of the ECLAIRs onboard software to CNES after 6 years of development.
CEA has delivered to CNES the flight version of the ECLAIRs instrument software for the SVOM satellite. This concludes a major instrumental development phase conducted by CEA over a period of 6 years to produce what is maybe one of the most complex software packages ever carried on a French scientific space instrument. The latest version of the software equips the ECLAIRs onboard computer, which departed to China in early 2023.
Apr 29, 2022
On the evening of the 28th, we could read on NASA's blog: "It's official, the alignment of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is now complete"!
To say that all the instruments of the James Webb Space Telescope are perfectly aligned, means that the primary mirror is well adjusted. The images are already breathtaking while the adjustment phase of all the elements of the telescope is not finished yet.
Apr 14, 2022
The Eclairs and MXT instruments of the SVOM mission delivered to CNES-Toulouse
The French teams of the ECLAIRs and MXT telescopes, instruments at the heart of the SVOM mission, experienced an important moment during March 2022. First, a general review of the two projects took place at CNES in Toulouse in front of a group of experts. This review allowed to verify that the two instruments meet the technical specifications and will be able to carry out the scientific mission.
Apr 11, 2022
On February 12, 2022, the ANTARES neutrino telescope (Astronomy with a Neutrino Telescope and Abyss environmental RESearch) put an end to its data taking started in 2007. During 15 years, thousands of neutrinos, precious elusive particles witnesses of the cataclysmic phenomena of the Universe, were detected at 2500 m in the Mediterranean abyss.
Mar 03, 2022
The objective of the realization of efficient compact neutron sources is to make it possible to perform neutron scattering experiments, with practically the same qualities as those carried out with neutron beam lines from research reactors of the Orphée type*.
These compact sources are obtained from a protons beam of medium-energy (3-50 MeV) and high current (100 mA) impinging on a light element target as beryllium. This interaction creates a neutron emission.
Feb 10, 2022
At Irfu, neutrino physics is studied using different sources such as reactors, accelerators and radioactive sources.
Irfu teams have been engaged for several decades in a long quest to study the neutrino in all its aspects, to understand its place in the Standard Model of particle physics and even more, but also its contribution to the evolution of the Universe since its first moments.
Jun 28, 2021
As part of the luminosity increase of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the first phase of the ATLAS experiment upgrade is coming to an end, before a restart planned for early 2022. To meet the requirements of physics in a highly radiative environment with a high particle flux, the two internal wheels of the muon spectrometer will be replaced by new devices: the New Small Wheels (NSW).
Jun 04, 2021
On 29 August 2019, scientists from the H.E.S.S. collaboration recorded one of the brightest cosmic explosions ever observed in the Universe. This gamma-ray burst emitted the most energetic photons ever detected in this type of event. Under the direction of Irfu researchers, the observations continued for several days. The analysis of the data collected calls into question the origin of the rays produced during the explosion.
May 28, 2021
The MXT camera for the SVOM mission has just been assembled and delivered by the CEA
An X-ray camera, intended to equip the Sino-French SVOM satellite, has just been assembled and delivered by scientists and technicians from the Institute for Research on the Fundamental Laws of the Universe (CEA/Irfu). This high-tech prototype will capture high-energy photons (X-rays) emitted during the explosion of massive stars or the fusion of dense stars. The camera, particularly compact and innovative, integrates in a very limited volume, a complete detection chain, an active thermal control and a filter wheel.
May 19, 2021
IRFU engineers and physicists and their collaborators have just completed the development of a modern Sirius, a key element of the super spectrometer separator (S3) under construction at GANIL.
The ancients understood that heroes, like Orion with Sirius, need their faithful companion. IRFU engineers and physicists and their collaborators are no exception to the rule and have just completed the development of a modern Sirius, a key element of the super spectrometer separator (S3) under construction at GANIL. The tests having been successful and the system has been moved to GANIL for its final installation.
Mar 10, 2021
The ATLAS detector equipped with a new charged particle tracking device for the HL-LHC.
The high luminosity phase of the LHC (HL-LHC) should enable the collection of a dataset unprecedented in the history of particle physics. In order to record these data, the Atlas detector will undergo a major upgrade. IRFU, via the Paris-Cluster in synergy with two other laboratories in Ile de France, is committed to the construction of a part of the internal tracker.
Jan 19, 2021
The search for double beta decay without neutrino emission (0νββ) is one of the major challenges of contemporary physics, because its observation would make a clear statement about the nature of the neutrino itself and potentially on the origin of the matter/antimatter asymmetry of our universe. The CUPID collaboration, in which several researchers from IRFU and IN2P3 are involved, is actively researching this process using scintillating bolometers as detectors.
Dec 10, 2020
Within the framework of a collaborative project between the DES/DDSD and the DRF/IRFU, a feasibility study of muography potential for the auscultation of nuclear reactors was initiated in 2017. After an initial evaluation phase carried out by IRFU using numerical modelling, first data were taken on the G2 reactor block, located at CEA Marcoule and shut down in the early 1980s, from February 2020.
Dec 08, 2020
In 2016, the announcement of the first direct detection of gravitational waves opened a new window of observation to probe our universe in a new way. The LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) space observatory promoted by ESA (European Space Agency) will allow the direct detection of gravitational waves undetectable by terrestrial interferometers.
Dec 02, 2020
For about fifteen years, the teams of the CEA's Fundamental Laws Research Institute and 3D PLUS, a company based in the Paris region, have learned to work closely together at the best international level to push the limits of high energy (2 - 1000 keV) spectro-imager performance for space applications.
Nov 13, 2020
ESA has adopted Ariel (Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey), the 4th medium-class space mission of its Cosmic Vision program. Ariel is expected to be launched in 2029 by Ariane 6 from the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou. The French team, composed of CNES, CEA and CNRS, has taken charge of the design, production and delivery of the AIRS spectrometer. Pierre Olivier Lagage, astrophysicist at Irfu, is one of the 2 co-PI for the ARIEL consortium; the other co-PI is Jean-Philippe Beaulieu from IAP.
Sep 25, 2020
A year and a half after the delivery of the prototype cryomodule (CM00) to ESS, the first production medium beta cryomodule (CM01) has now arrived at the ESS site. It left CEA on September 22, 2020 for a two-day trip to Lund, Sweden. The Irfu teams had previously validated the RF and cryogenic performances of this cryomodule. It will be tested again on the ESS test bench before being integrated in its final position in the accelerator tunnel. This is a first step.
Jul 11, 2020
That's one wall the White Walkers won't cross. An international collaboration bringing together the IRFU (Université Paris-Saclay), the Astronomy Institute of the University of Hawaii, the LPC (Université Clermont Auvergne), the IP2I (Université Claude Bernard de Lyon), and the Racah Institute of Physics (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), has discovered an immense structure in the distribution of galaxies, called the "South Pole Wall".
Jul 08, 2020
Scientists from the large cosmological survey SDSS/eBOSS have constructed the first so-called "tomographic" map of the far Universe on a very large scale, which until now only existed in one dimension, along the line of sight of the ground-based telescope. To do this, they used the latest Lyman-alpha forest data, which indirectly plot the density of matter in the direction of bright objects, the quasars. The resulting map covers a cube of 3.26 billion light-years from observations of nearly 10,000 quasars.
Jun 28, 2020
In its standard form, double beta decay is a process in which a nucleus decays into a different nucleus and emits two electrons and two antineutrinos (2νββ). This nuclear transition is very rare, but it was detected in several nuclei with sophisticated experiments. If neutrinos are their own antiparticles, it’s possible that the antineutrinos emitted during double beta decay annihilate one another and disappear.
Jun 08, 2020
After more than four years of research and development, design and manufacturing work, the MFT (Muon Forward Tracker), a new detector that will equip the ALICE experiment at the LHC, has seen its construction finalized and is currently under commissioning at CERN.
Feb 18, 2020
Following SPIRAL2's commissioning authorization issued by the French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) on July 8, 2019, many crucial steps were successfully completed by the end of 2019. A first proton beam was accelerated to 33 MeV, the nominal energy by the SPIRAL2 linear accelerator (LINAC) and a first test experiment was achieved the Neutron For Science (NFS) experimental room.
These first results in 2019 are very promising.
Jan 23, 2020
Arrived safely. The focal plane of the visible imager on the Euclid satellite has just been delivered by Irfu to the laboratory responsible for the instrument (MSSL/UK) to continue its integration into the satellite, which is scheduled to take off in 2022.
The first studies of this focal plane have been carried out at Irfu since 2010 and after almost 10 years of development and testing, it was fully tested by Irfu in 2019. This Focal Plane is composed of 36 CDDs totalizing more than 600 million pixels.
Nov 21, 2019
The missing mass of the universe or non-baryonic dark matter is probably made up of particles that remain to be discovered. Massive and neutral, with very weak interactions, they still escape a detection that would identify them. While conventional photons are massless, dark matter could be made up of particles of a new type, similar to massive photons.
Nov 20, 2019
Microscope satellite consolidates the Einstein Equivalence Principle
Testing the equivalence principle, a fundamental principle of the general relativity developed by Albert Einstein from which the universality of free fall derives, that is the challenge undertaken by the Microscope spacecraft.
Oct 28, 2019
‘First light’ for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI): as the installation phase nears completion, this new instrument is due to undergo final tests before starting to create a giant map of the sky in early 2020, a mission that is scheduled to run for five years.
Jul 12, 2019
The installation of DESI, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument at the Kitt Peak Observatory in Arizona, has just passed an important milestone: with 6 operational spectrographs on site, the minimum configuration required to meet the scientific objectives of the project has been reached. At the end, DESI will have 10 spectrographs and will commit itself from 2020 to the spectroscopic survey of 35 million galaxies and quasars, to study the dark component of the Universe.
Apr 11, 2019
The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is intended to make the spectroscopic survey of 35 million galaxies and quasars from 2020 onwards, to study precisely the properties of dark energy. Its installation, started in 2018, has recently entered a new phase with the reception and assembly of the first two spectrographs out of the 10 that the instrument will include.
Jan 21, 2019
On November 29, 2018, the first version of the ECU software for the ECLAIRs instrument was delivered.
This computer, called Gamma Camera Management and Scientific Processing Unit, will be set on the Franco-Chinese SVOM satellite, designed to study gamma-ray bursts. It will allow the management of the ECLAIRs instrument and the detection of gamma-ray bursts by the SVOM mission in real time on board.
Dec 21, 2018
After more than 5 years of development, including 6 months of integration work of the 12,000 separate components to a complete cryomodule, the CEA-Irfu has just validated the technology of this complex system that reached the nominal ESS accelerating field in the 4 superconducting accelerating cavities.
