Established 2005 (2005) Doctoral students 31 Phone +33 1 57 27 60 70 Type of business Mixed Research Unit (UMR) | Administrative staff 14 Location Paris, France Founded 2005 Academic staff 157 | |
Address 10 Rue Alice Domon et Léonie Duquet, 75013 Paris, France | ||
The Astroparticle and Cosmology (APC) laboratory in Paris gathers researchers (experimentalists, theorists and observers) working in different areas including high-energy astrophysics, cosmology, gravitation, and neutrino physics.
Contents
The institute was founded in January 2005 and soon moved to new campus of Paris Diderot University in the Paris Rive Gauche area.
The laboratory is a "Mixed Research Unit" in French terminology, funded by Paris Diderot University, the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (represented by three of its Institutes: mainly IN2P3, but also INSU and INP), the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives, and the Paris Observatory.
The first director of the laboratory was Pierre Binetruy (2005-2013). Since January 2014 the director is Stavros Katsanevas.
Cosmology
This group, headed by Kenneth Ganga, includes two main areas of research:
- Experimental investigation of the cosmic microwave background, with particular emphasis on the detection of B-modes that could provide the signature of inflation. Researchers are actively involved in the Planck space mission and Qubic experiment
- Cosmological analysis of large spectroscopic and imaging surveys for the determination of constraints on the nature of dark energy. Researchers are involved in the wide-field observatories aimed at understanding the nature of dark energy: the large field Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, telescope LSST and the Euclid space mission
High-energy astrophysics
Research carried out by this group, headed by Anne Lemière, aims at understanding the violent phenomena of the universe (mostly within compact stars, neutron stars, or black holes). The group is engaged in many international projects with telescopes or instruments detecting photons, cosmic rays, or neutrinos. For the observation of
- X-rays, it is involved in the future space mission Astro-H
- gamma rays, it is involved in the INTEGRAL observatory, the High Energy Stereoscopic System, and the Cherenkov Telescope Array
- cosmic rays of ultra-high energy, it is involved in the Pierre Auger Observatory and JEM-EUSO
- neutrinos, it is involved in the ANTARES and KM3NeT projects collaborations
Neutrinos
The research carried out by this group, headed by Jaime Dawson, is dedicated to understanding neutrino properties is one of the laboratories' main activities. Researchers are involved in studies of the phenomenon of oscillation (Borexino, Double Chooz) and on future projects addressing the measurement of the neutrino mass hierarchy with atmospheric neutrinos with the deep-sea water Cherenkov telescope Orca and the long-baseline neutrino oscillation project Laguna-LBNO.
Gravitation
This core research of this group led by Eric Chassande-Mottin is the direct detection of gravitational waves. The group is involved in both ground-based (Virgo interferometer) and space-based (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna and its precursor LISA Pathfinder) instruments.
Theory
This group, headed by Cristina Volpe, covers the research topics of the laboratory from a theoretical perspective. It also carries out work on other areas of fundamental physics.
Organization
The staff of the laboratory consists of 75 permanent researchers and over 60 engineers, technicians, and administrative personnel, plus about 125 non-permanent employees (PhD students, postdoctoral fellows, visitors). In addition, the Paris Center for Cosmological Physics directed by George Smoot is also part of the laboratory and one of the three functional centres of the Astroparticle Physics European Consortium is based here.
An "International Associated Laboratory" in astroparticle physics was launched in September 2007. It associates the APC laboratory with the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (Stanford University).
Evaluation
The laboratory has been evaluated twice by the AERES: in 2008 and in 2013. In the latter evaluation, the lab won excellent scores (A or A+ in all criteria).