First Franco-Russian Doctorate, initiated by LAPTh

Last June, the signing of the first Franco-Russian doctorate was held at the French Embassy in Moscow. The partners of this agreement, initiated by Pascal CHARDONNET of LAPTh, are the Université Savoie Mont Blanc, the Université Grenoble-Alpes, the COMUE Grenoble-Alpes, the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics and the MEPhI in Moscow.

The objectives of the PhD in Fundamental Physics are:
- the integration of the training project in fundamental physics, with the creation of a graduate school where Franco-Russian professors from partner universities will share their lectures.
- the organization of joint doctoral training schools, which will take place every year in Russia and France.
- the increasing of mobility between the two countries between the consortium partners both among students and professors.
- the issue of a joint doctoral degree at the end of the program.
- the promotion of dissemination of cultural exchanges with a language component, even if the main language remains English.

The first joint doctoral training school will be held in Moscow on 12-16 December this year, which coindices with the 50th anniversary of Franco-Russian scientific cooperation. The theme will focus on the structure and evolution of the universe. The LAPTh welcome also the first student of the doctorate starting November 2016, on the understanding of the dark age of our universe with the formation of its first stars.

The IDEX project Université Grenoble Alpes is selected !

The conglomerate of academic institutions united by the Grenoble Alpes University Community (UGA) has been selected winner of the Excellence Initiative (IDEX) by an international jury chaired by Jean-Marc Rapp. The project submitted by the COMUE "Communauté Université Grenoble Alpes" under the programme "Investments for the Future" aims at creating a world-class university, with a strong international reputation, founded on scientific excellence, dynamism of its ecosystem, the leading rôle in educational innovation and student success, the involvement and commitment of the socio-economic and cultural world and local authorities. This date will mark a new beginning for the new institution and will be a major boon for all the laboratories involved. For LAPTh this will reinforce our contribution to the Excellence Laboratory Initiative (Labex) Enigmass and build upon our efforts in building a strong collaboration with the laboratories of the site in the framework of the UGA scientific clusters. More details on the UGA Idex project can be found here (in French).

International Indo-French Laboratory: IFTHEP

 LAPTh (F. Boudjema) is coordinating an Indo French Laboratory, LIA  (Laboratoire International Associé). The Indian coordinator is Rohini Godbole of the IISc (Indian Institute of Science) in Bangalore. The set up of the LIA is well timed since it covers the physics of the LHC, the LHC has just started colliding beams to achieve the unprecedented total centre of mass energy of 13TeV. After the discovery of the Higgs we are hoping that the opening up of this new threshold will allow discoveries that will shed light on the mysteries of the Higgs and provide clues about dark matter. The other major topic of the LIA is the study of the quark gluon plasma which intimately should provide clues about how matter forms in extreme conditions.

The LIA is structured around 4 nodes in each country. Participating laboratories represent the leading theory groups in both country with a high visibility internationally. The French laboratories are LAPTh, LPSC Grenoble, IPN Lyon, LPT Orsay, CPhT (Ecole Polytechnique) and IPhT CEA Saclay. On the Indian part beside IISc we have TIFR Mumbai, SINP/IACS/IISER Kolkata, IMSc Chennai and HRI Allahabad. The LIA IFTHEP (Indo French Theory High Energy Physics) , will run for an initial period of 4 years.

Refined background calculations for AMS02

The latest results from the AMS-02 experiment were announced in mid-April at CERN. These were the most precise measurements to date concerning the fluxes of protons, helium and the antiproton-to-proton ratio, extending at the same time the energy range of the PAMELA experiment. Most awaited were the results concerning the production of anti-matter, in particular the measurement of the anti-protons since the latter can be produced by the annihilation of Dark Matter particles which constitutes therefore a primary source. The conventional Standard Model production of anti-protons is through the collisions of high-energy cosmic rays with interstellar matter. This mechanism is  therefore a secondary production mechanism that constitutes an important background to the signal of new physics through Dark Matter detection. Previous estimates of this background predicted a steep decrease at high energy (hundreds of GeV) of the antiproton-to-proton ratio.

Read more: Refined background calculations for AMS02