CEA Department of Astrophysics
UMR AIM
Astrophysics has long played a major role within France’s CEA, the Commission for Atomic and Alternative Energy, since the development of x-ray and gamma ray detectors led to their use in the observation of high energy sources in the universe. At the Department of Astrophysics / UMR AIM, scientists have built on these core competencies to build a department that brings together top researchers in instrumentation, numerical simulation and data analysis.
As a joint research centre, the Department of Astrophysics is committed to breaking down the barriers between these three pillars, combining R&D on detectors, space instrumentation, high level scientific exploitation of space mission and ground based instruments, innovative statistics signal analysis, theory and numerical simulations. Knowledge in all these areas is required to answer key astrophysical questions, from the study of exoplanets to the behaviour of the sun.
The department is working on a wide range of European Space Agency missions, across their “Cosmic Vision 2015-2025” program and beyond. Projects include everything from the Solar Orbiter to PLATO and Euclid, working at the design and planning stage, up to building instruments and analysing data.
Euclid is a space telescope aiming to map the geometry of the dark Universe consisting of a 1.2m telescope equipped with two instruments: a wide field imager for visible wavelengths (VIS) and a near-infrared spectro-imager (NISP). CEA will provide the focal plane for the VIS instrument (around 36 CCDs totalling more than 500 million pixels) alongside a control system for its motors and electric power, as well as cryo-mechanisms for the NISP.
To effectively design missions like Euclid, as well as to effectively use the data that’s gathered, extensive astrophysical numerical simulation is required, with calculations that require vast amounts of computing power. In CEA’s Cosmology and Galaxy Evolution Group, researchers are combining observations from large spatial instruments and telescopes with high-resolution computer simulations to reconstruct evolution of galaxies. Data from missions like Euclid will have a major impact on their understanding of the role dark matter and dark energy plays in the physics governing large-scale structure formation.
Beyond Euclid, CEA scientists are working on a wide range of projects including understanding the dynamics of hot plasmas in clusters of galaxies, as well as observing star formation in cold interstellar medium. From large scale missions with ESA, to supporting young researchers in analysis and interpreting key astrophysical data, CEA’s Department of Astrophysics is bringing together all the skills and technology necessary to observe the universe at all wavelengths and improve our understanding of the universe.