The NEWS project is dedicated to the direct search for very-low mass Dark Matter particles named WIMPs, from 0.1 to 10 GeV. Given the recent absence of evidence at LHC for SUSY and departure from the standard model of particle physics, the Dark Matter, an essential ingredient for understanding our Universe, appears as one of the only evidence for new physics. In particular, in a number of new models, the preferred particle candidates are less massive than anticipated. Searches for such light Dark Matter require new detection technology. The goal is to build a large (2 m diameter) radio-pure spherical gaseous detector that will operate at SNOLAB underground environment with the aim of reaching a much higher sensitivity for light Dark Matter search than any other experiment. The biggest part of the budget (2 M$) is already, thanks to a grant of excellence, assured by Queen’s University and it will be dedicated to the vessel and the infrastructure. The ANR request concerns the most critical parts required to reach the expected performance: the low-radioactivity sensor, the electronics, the DAQ and the calibration system. An existing detector at LSM underground laboratory will act as a prototype, where the upgrades for the SNOLAB detector will be validated. Indeed the very competitive background level reached by this detector, compared to existing experiments, makes it an ideal facility for testing key components of the SNOLAB project. The main characteristics of the detector are: sub-keV energy threshold, fiducialisation and background rejection by pulse shape analysis, ability to operate at pressures up to 10 bars, tens of kg of gas with various light targets such as H, He and Ne nuclei. Such a detector will have an unprecedented sensitivity to address the 0.1-10 GeV mass range of particles with spin independent nucleon cross section as low as 10-6 pb. We would like to point out that, for a modest cost, this project could have extraordinary scientific impact.

Wireless communication systems are widely used in civilian and military applications where they support essential services. Protecting these systems against intentional or unintentional electromagnetic threats is therefore a major challenge. However, the evolution of these systems towards integrated planar technologies and the development of high-power electromagnetic sources mean that there is no fully effective protection device to date. The initial ASTRID project, ANR-15-ASTR-0020, demonstrated that the series association of two planar protection devices, one based on gaseous plasma and the other on PIN diode, could be very effective against high-power threats. However, the demonstration was carried out with separated elements in a non-autonomous laboratory environment. The main objective of this project is to gain technological maturity by solving two problems: 1, co-integration of the two protection devices on a single planar circuit of decimetric dimensions and 2, encapsulation of the device to make it more autonomous. The volume and mass of the new device, essentially made of ceramic, should make it compatible with an operational environment. The project is divided into three phases. The first will consist in pre-sizing the protection device to take into account the change in scale between the device from the initial project and the new smaller one. To do this, we will use numerical tools developed during the previous project and experiments in laboratory environment. The second phase will lead to the development of the plasma protection device encapsulated in a ceramic cavity and to the study of its co-integration with a diode. The final protection device with the plasma and the diode co-integrated in a single ceramic cavity will then be developed and tested during the third phase to validate the final objective of the project. All the devices will be tested with electromagnetic threats representative of real signals using the test facilities available at CEA Gramat. In order to take into account the exploratory nature of the ceramic design, a less risky fallback solution is planned. It will lead to the development of a similar device but in a metal cavity. Although more massive and less compact, this conventional technology should nevertheless make it possible to demonstrate a protection efficiency that is currently non-existent at these levels of electromagnetic threats and thus to fulfill the objectives of the project. In parallel to these technical and experimental tasks, a more exploratory task will be performed to study new promising concepts for future developments. This work, with a lower TRL, will be mainly based on numerical and theoretical studies but it may also be the subject of experimental characterization in the laboratory. The combination of microwave and plasma skills from LAPLACE, ISAE-SUPAERO, and CEA Gramat, partners involved in the initial project, is now being reinforced by the support of ANYWAVES. This company is developing a promising technology for the design of microwave devices by 3D printing of ceramics. At the end of this project, an integrated prototype will be tested under conditions representative of an operational environment. The partners will thus be able to support the industrial transfer in order to develop, in the fields of defense and strategic civilian applications, effective protection devices with regard to the most powerful electromagnetic threats.

Megathrust earthquakes can induce metric-scale sudden subsidence or uplift, and destabilize shelf sediments, instigating turbiditic flows and landslides. They can also generate tsunamis that can transport huge quantities of marine and coastal sediments and debris inland. Such dramatic events can cause many casualties, destroy infrastructure, and have longer-term impacts on the environment. They may considerably modify the landscape, affecting human settlement over millennia. Between large earthquakes, due to strain accumulation, land deformation induces relative sea level changes at rates much faster than those due to climate change. These events represent a major threat and must be accounted for in regional planning. Missing information on such extreme and rare events, necessary to better constrain the seismic hazard, is a major limitation. The largest earthquakes may recur only every 500 or 1000 yrs and the historical catalogs are too short to allow an estimation of earthquake recurrence intervals and of their magnitude. Existing models based on short historical records have not been successful at predicting earthquake recurrence. Paleoseismological and paleotsunami studies of the geological record are thus needed to address this issue and establish time series over thousands of years. The Lesser Antilles arc is a densely populated and highly touristic zone exposed to megathrust earthquakes. The largest historical event that occurred on 8 February 1843t destroyed the city of Pointe-à-Pitre on Guadeloupe, killing more than 1500 people. Today, a comparable earthquake might cause tens of thousands of casualties. The objective of the CARQUAKES project is to improve the catalog of large earthquakes and tsunamis in the Lesser Antilles and characterize the related hazards by applying an innovative and novel multidisciplinary approach combining several state-of-art methods of offshore and onshore paleoseismology and tsunami modeling. Offshore, we will use the marine sediments (i.e. turbidites/homogenites) as proxies for earthquake recurrence in the Lesser Antilles (Task 1). During the CASEIS marine cruise in Spring 2016, we collected 42 sedimentary cores in the eastern part of the Lesser Antilles arc, above the megathrust zone. The CARQUAKES project is in part conceived to permit the exploitation of this large dataset. Onshore, we will combine several approaches to retrieve the traces of extreme events: 1) paleoseismological and paleotsunami studies in coastal lagoons and ponds that may have preserved the evidence of earthquakes and tsunamis (Task 2); 2) Coral paleogeodesy along the reefs, where coral microatolls may record earthquakes in their skeletal growth (Task 3); and 3) Archaeology and history comprising analysis of historical descriptions of earthquakes and tsunamis in archives and investigations of several coastal archeological sites on Guadeloupe (Task 4). Tsunami and strain modeling will be performed to calculate the impact of earthquake cycle and tsunamis on the littoral zone (wave height, inundation and coastline variations) (Task 5). The CARQUAKES project brings together experts in tectonics, geomorphology, paleoseismology and paleotsunamis, sedimentology, paleo-environment, tsunami modeling, botany, palynology, archaeology, and history. Six partners are involved in the project. The project will benefit society because it will provide information essential to reduce the vulnerability of coastal populations in the Lesser Antilles islands. This will improve our knowledge of earthquake and tsunami hazards and their impact on coastline evolution, ecosystems (destruction and resilience) and human settlement.

The identification and remote detection of energetic materials have become a major issue of dual research, both civil and military, for the Defence and Security of populations in France, on the European continent and overseas. A strong axis of photonics research in this context is the ability to measure the unique spectral signatures of explosives or materials representing a potential threat (e.g., IED - Improvised Explosive Devices), from remote distances larger than 10 meters. Building a prototype for this purpose requires knowledge of some signatures of explosives in a particular spectral range and to transmit appropriate radiations operating in this range with high enough field intensities to interact with the target material and to collect the scattered field. Here, we propose to exploit the terahertz (THz) spectroscopy for the measurement and identification of spectra of explosives having a military interest and those of mimic products (« simulants »). The THz waves, located between the microwaves and infrared waves, are not invasive; they pass through some thin materials and have a high selectivity to the rotational and vibrational transitions of complex molecules including those having the functional groups of explosives. In recent years, many researchers have coupled intense femtosecond laser pulses to produce terahertz field amplitudes greater than the GV/m and being broadband enough (from 1 to 50 THz) to make the junction with the far- and mid-infrared region. In this extended spectral range, many " fingerprints " of explosives are expected. With the novel available high-power laser sources, their identification over long distances in air is nowadays possible. The ALTESSE project proposes an exploratory research on a new technology for emitting THz radiation by using two-color ultrashort laser sources in order to form a remote plasma rendered controllable by the focusing geometry and the optical beam parameters (short focal length or collimated propagation in filamentation regime). The detection part of our device is based on exploiting the second harmonic induced by four-wave mixing (third-order process) between the laser pump, the emitted THz field and a high-voltage electric field, then on performing the spectrum of the collected radiation. This method, called ABCD ("Air-Biased Coherent Detection "), never operated in France, can constitute a significant technological breakthrough in detection and analysis of a rich variety of explosives. To establish the proof of concept of this technology, four partners are involved in the project. A team of experts in high-performance computing (CEA, CELIA) will provide data from numerical simulations predicting the best laser configurations for the generation of THz sources created by plasma. During the first 18 months of the project, the University of Marburg (Germany) will test this new technology for laser-plasma-based THz spectroscopy of simulants detected in both transmission and reflexion geometries. The University of Bordeaux (CELIA) will test the same technology for laser wavelengths operating in the ocular safety domain. The last 18 months of the project will be devoted to install a laser source at the French-German Research Institute of Saint-Louis for the detection of solid explosives (powders, plastics and mixtures) by transmission and reflection, in an authorized area. We propose to record, interpret and complete the databases of many explosives in the THz-infrared band. The success of such a project would pave the way to a maturation stage especially dedicated to remote sensing and offer promising perspectives for the achievement of a demonstrator.

In recent years, lithium batteries have emerged as the best technology to power electric vehicles and are regarded as a serious contender for grid applications. Foreseen feedstock considerations already blow the whistle on lithium resources. Fears of limited lithium supplies at an affordable cost have driven the development of new chemistries and the most appealing alternative is to use sodium (Na) instead of lithium (Li). There are several reasons for this: Na resources are in principle unlimited, evenly distributed worldwide and their cost is extremely low; Na does not alloy with Al enabling the use of cheap Al current collectors; and last but not least Na has similar intercalation chemistry to that of Li. Moreover, sodium technology has already been successfully implemented in today’s commercialized high temperature Na/S cells for MW size electrochemical energy storage and for Na/NiCl2 ZEBRA-type systems for electric vehicles1. In spite of this, the development of Na-ion batteries did not materialize because of preconceived ideas that Na-ion could not compete with Li-ion in terms of i) energy density owing to the fact that Na is heavier than Li and has a higher redox potential and ii) of power rate due the larger ionic radii of Na+. Over the last four years, by reuniting their efforts through the RS2E structure, members of the present application have decided to challenge such preconceived ideas. Based on both our present understanding of this technology and recent research advances at the electrode/electrolyte level we have reached the confidence that making Na-ion batteries is a realistic target with present cost estimates predicting a 30% reduction per kWh as compared to Li-ion technology2. Moreover, the first laboratory assembled Na-ion cells, based on home developed electrode/electrolyte formulations, do prove the viability of the concept since they are showing impressive power and cycle life capabilities. Being among the pioneers in such resurging interest for Na-ion batteries, we do not want to repeat the Li-ion history for which the concept came from European and American researchers but development and commercialization took place in Japan. For such a reason, we conjointly decided with CEA to promote the technological development and scaling up of our laboratory prototypes and benchmark our present Na-ion chemistry in terms of sustainability, cost, safety and performances, the CEA bringing its expertise in materials scale-up and prototyping. The DESCARTES program provides a timely opportunity as it perfectly coincides with our objectives of promoting Na-ion as a new emerging technology not only for EV’s and grid applications but also as a technology capable of meeting the performance targets (1 Ah, 8 A discharge and 16 A peaks) dictated by the field of robotics in a cost-effective, sustainable and environmental-friendly manner. To reach the project targeted performance, our strategy will be to optimize our present Na-ion system proven to work at the lab scale. Having already structured our benchmarking efforts within the RS2E, one year is a realistic target to demonstrate the potential and originality of our approach, with 2 and 3 years lapse time being fully adequate to reach a workable module pack to be tested on a DGA robot, respectively