To access all features of this site, you must enable Javascript. Here are the instructions for enabling Javascript in your web browser.
Fundamental Research Division
The DRF at the CEA assemble approximately 6,000 scientists since January 2016.
Researchers from CEA-Iramis have demonstrated that, contrary to what is generally believed, the electronic spin carried by erbium can have a long coherence time. This makes it a good candidate for relaying quantum information via photons.
The LSCE (CEA-CNRS-UVSQ) and the EDYTEM laboratory (CNRS - Université Savoie Mont Blanc - Ministère de la Culture) have established a comprehensive overview of cesium-137 fallout observed in sedimentary archives around the world. This database makes it possible to improve the dating of sedimentary cores.
An IPhT physicist and two collaborators have proposed a theoretical model to explain the low mass of the Higgs boson and the cosmological constant – both of which are considered inconsistent with current physics. This model is expected to be tested soon at CERN.
Researchers at the CEA-Iramis (Laboratoire des Solides Irradiés) are making actuators out of magneto-active polymers, foreshadowing the potential of 4D printing to fabricate “behavioral” objects using additive manufacturing of smart materials.
At the CEA-Joliot’s NeuroSpin neuroimaging center, the Iseult project’s 11.7-tesla MRI produced its first images in September 2021, thanks to the extraordinary magnet developed by the CEA-Irfu. Read on for a look at the origins behind this world premiere.
With the help of a “bone marrow on a chip”, researchers at Irig and their partners (Inserm, Hôpital St-Louis, Paris Diderot University) have observed the onset of differentiation in stem cells, before their transformation into blood cells. Upon contact with a bone cell, some of them completely reorganize. This unexpected discovery opens up entirely new paths for the study of a number of diseases such as leukemia.
The firm Kayrros and its partners, the LSCE (CEA-CNRS-UVSQ) and INRAE, are launching the first measurement platform to monitor, on a regional scale, the capacity of forests to reduce atmospheric CO2. These open access data are based on spatial observations of biomass and capitalize on nearly 30 years of research.
Ahead of the opening of the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP 26) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Glasgow, Scotland, the latest estimates from Carbon Monitor – an international research initiative launched during the pandemic involving Tsinghua University (China), the LSCE (CEA-CNRS-UVSQ) and University of California, Irvine – show that global CO2 emissions at the end of September 2021 snapped back from 2020, and were only 1% lower than emissions at the same time in 2019.
According to a Peking University study involving the LSCE (CEA-CNRS-UVSQ), there are “hot spots” of soil-based emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O), a very powerful greenhouse gas. Just by focusing on those soils that receive excessive nitrogen fertilizer deposits, it should be possible to reduce total nitrous oxide emissions from soils by nearly 20%.
An international collaboration involving the CEA-Irfu and the CEA’s Energy Directorate has revealed a subtle neutron clustering mechanism by rigorously combining nuclear reactor experiments, modelling and simulations, all of which are extremely demanding. This result goes beyond the scope of just nuclear safety.
Top page
CEA is a French government-funded technological research organisation in four main areas: low-carbon energies, defense and security, information technologies and health technologies. A prominent player in the European Research Area, it is involved in setting up collaborative projects with many partners around the world.