We are based in Grenoble, the capital city of the French Alps. We lie at the bottom of a very interesting hierarchical structure. We are an « entity » originating from HELFA (HELium from Fundamental to Applications), one of the research groups of the MCBT (Matière Condensée Basses Températures) Department, among the three composing the Institut Néel, i.e. one of the biggest Physics laboratories in France. The Institut Néel is part of the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) and associated to the Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA). Straightforward, isn’t it ?

Group Members

Alessandro MONFARDINI (Research Director – Coordinator)

Martino CALVO (Research Engineer – KID Detectors, Cryogenics, Automation etc.)

Alain BENOIT (Research Director – Emeritus – « The Founder » of our group in the 90s)

Daniele DELICATO (Postdoc – DANAE)

Emile PRELE (PhD – NIKONA and KAIROS)

Mounir ABDKRIMI (PhD – Electronics Group)

Florence LEVY-BERTRAND (Researcher – Solid State Physics)

Loïc SORIANO (University Researcher – Solid State Physics)

Gregory GARDE (Cryogenics Group)

Emilio BARRIA (Cryogenics Group)

Julien MINET (Electronics Group)

Guillaume BRES (Electronics Group)

and our GRIK collegues at LPSC, IRAM and IPAG.

Former members: Usasi CHOWDHURY, Christian HOFFMANN, Philippe CAMUS, Loren SWENSON, Angelo CRUCIANI, Nicolas BOUDOU, Shibo SHU, Antonio D’ADDABBO, Aurelien BIDEAUD, Markus ROESCH, Gregoire COIFFARD, Johannes GOUPY, Gizem SOYLU, Alessandro FASANO, Olivier DUPRE, Philippe CAMUS, Francesco VALENTI and others.

External selected collaborations: INFN, Roma La Sapienza,LAM, TU-DELFT, Tsukuba, etc.

A non-exhaustive list of publications.

Equipment

We are continuously improving our state-of-the-art testing instrumentation that now includes:

  • Five home-made dilution cryostats with RF lines and optical access in our Néel space
  • One dilution cryostat installed at LPSC-Grenoble since 2021 (formerly NIKA and KISS)
  • One big dilution cryostat installed at the 30-meters telescope at Pico Veleta (NIKA2)
  • One dilution cryostat installed currently in Delft in the framework of the TIFUUN project
  • Sky Simulator
  • Two Martin-Puplett Interferometers for spectral characterisation
  • Polarisation-sensitive sources for high-resolution spectral characterisation between 30 GHz and 1.5 THz

In summary, we dispose now at Néel of three CONCERTO-generation cryo-free dilution cryostats and two liquid-helium dating from the NIKA generation. That means five fully-equipped optical cryostats with base temperature from 50 to 150mK.

Pictures of our cryostats: NIKA0, NIKA1 (at LPSC), NIKA1.5, NIKA2 (at Pico Veleta), CONCERTO (C1), C2, C3, KAIROS-spin, TIFUUN (at TU Delft).

Pictures of the Sky Simulator, Martin-Puplett Interferometer, THz photo-mixer source, as an example of the equipment in our laboratory at Néel.

We work in symbiosis with the Cryogenics and Electronics groups at the Institut Néel.

NAI collaborates very closely, on a project-per-project base, with members from other laboratories like LPSC, IPAG, IRAM, LAM, and other international collaborators like Roma La Sapienza, INFN, CSIC, TU Delft, Cardiff, University of Minnesota etc.