The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Phase 2 will take advantage of Advanced Technologies based on densely packed phased array systems for observing directly the sky, or for use as the receiver system at the focus of large collectors. These systems will provide extremely large fields of view for unprecedented mapping speeds, thus making it possible to make large all-sky surveys which will be used to understand fundamental problems in physics, including the nature of Dark Energy and the process of formation of the first stars in the Universe. The development of these phased array systems as a viable technology for SKA depend not only on their performance, but on their affordability. Recent advances in integrated circuits have made it possible to demonstrate the feasibility of densely packed phased arrays, in particular with the EMBRACE system currently operational at Nançay and at Westerbork in the Netherlands. The current proposal is concerned with further integration of components in an analog integrated circuit, ultimately combining a filter with Low Noise Amplifier in a single chip, and Analog to Digital Converters with Serialiser in a single chip. This will represent an enormous savings in manufacturing cost and operating cost with reduced power consumption compared to discrete components. The technology also has a large number of applications outside radio astronomy, and novel techniques developed during the course of this study may be submitted for patent.

The present project is put into the context of the international projects ITER and DEMO aiming at managing nuclear fusion to produce energy. In tokamaks (nuclear fusion reactors), a hot plasma composed of deuterium and tritium nuclei is magnetically confined to achieve fusion. The heating of the plasma is mainly obtained by the injection of high-energy deuterium neutral beams, coming from the neutralization of high-intensity D- negative-ion beams. D- negative-ions are produced in a low-pressure plasma source and subsequently extracted and accelerated. The standard and most efficient solution to produce high negative-ion current uses cesium (Cs) injection and deposition inside the source to enhance negative-ion surface-production mechanisms. However, ITER and DEMO requirements in terms of extracted current push this technology to its limits. The already identified drawbacks of cesium injection are becoming real technological and scientific bottlenecks, and alternative solutions to produce negative-ions would be highly valuable. The first objective of the present project is to find an alternative solution to produce high yields of H-/D- negative-ions on surfaces in Cs-free H2/D2 plasmas. The proposed study is based on a physical effect discovered at PIIM in collaboration with LSPM, namely the enhancement of negative-ion yield on boron-doped-diamond at high temperature. The yield increase observed places diamond material as the most up to date relevant alternative solution for the generation of negative-ions in Cs-free plasmas. The project aims at fully characterizing and evaluating the relevance and the capabilities of diamond films (intrinsic and doped polycrystalline, single crystal as well as nanodiamond films…) as negative-ion enhancers in a negative-ion source. The second objective is to investigate diamond erosion under hydrogen (deuterium) plasma irradiation, with two main motivations. First, material erosion could be a limitation of the use of diamond as a negative-ion enhancer in a negative-ion source and must be evaluated. Second, the inner-parts of the tokamaks receiving the highest flux of particles and power are supposed to be made of tungsten, but its self-sputtering and its melting under high thermal loads are still major issues limiting its use. It has been shown in the past by one of the partners that diamond is a serious candidate as an efficient alternative-material for fusion reactors. Therefore, diamond erosion in hydrogen plasmas will also be investigated from this perspective. At the moment when all the efforts are put on tungsten, maintaining a scientific watch on backup solutions for tokamak materials is crucial. The project associates partners with complementary expertise in the field of plasma-surface interactions on the one hand, and diamond deposition and characterization on the other hand. Furthermore, in order to span the gap between fundamental science and real-life applications, negative-ion surface-production and diamond erosion will be studied in laboratory plasmas (PIIM in collaboration with LSPM ) as well as in real devices (Cybele negative-ion source at IRFM and Magnum-PSI experiment at DIFFER ). PIIM: Physique des Interactions Ioniques et Moléculaires, Université Aix-Marseille, CNRS LSPM: Laboratoire des Sciences des Procédés et des Matériaux, CNRS, Université de Paris 13 IRFM: Institut de Recherche sur la Fusion Magnétique, Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique, Cadarache DIFFER: Dutch Institute For Fundamental Energy Research, The Netherlands

ANR-PROTECT is a fund-raising project aiming to consolidate an ongoing initiative to federate the leading European research institutes working on the contribution of land ice melt to sea-level rise. The consortium thus established will apply to the H2020 call LC-CLA-07-2019: “The changing cryosphere: uncertainties, risks and opportunities”, specifically the action on sea level changes. The foundation of a very strong multidisciplinary consortium is already laid, bringing together the leading European experts on (i) atmosphere and surface mass balance of ice sheets and glaciers, (ii) ocean and sub ice shelf melting, (ii) ice sheet flow, (iv) the coupling of these components, (v) mass balance of mountain glaciers, (vi) regional sea level changes and (vii) coastal impacts. In accordance with the requirements of LC-CLA-07-2019, the expertise of the PROTECT consortium will allow to tackle the essential societal issue of improving the regional and local projections of sea level change by including a better representation of the evolution of the cryosphere mass balance.

Blue-Action will provide fundamental and empirically-grounded, executable science that quantifies and explains the role of a changing Arctic in increasing predictive capability of weather and climate of the Northern Hemisphere.To achieve this Blue-Action will take a transdisciplinary approach, bridging scientific understanding within Arctic climate, weather and risk management research, with key stakeholder knowledge of the impacts of climatic weather extremes and hazardous events; leading to the co-design of better services.This bridge will build on innovative statistical and dynamical approaches to predict weather and climate extremes. In dialogue with users, Blue-Arctic will take stock in existing knowledge about cross-sectoral impacts and vulnerabilities with respect to the occurrence of these events when associated to weather and climate predictions. Modeling and prediction capabilities will be enhanced by targeting firstly, lower latitude oceanic and atmospheric drivers of regional Arctic changes and secondly, Arctic impacts on Northern Hemisphere climate and weather extremes. Coordinated multi-model experiments will be key to test new higher resolution model configurations, innovative methods to reduce forecast error, and advanced methods to improve uptake of new Earth observations assets are planned. Blue-Action thereby demonstrates how such an uptake may assist in creating better optimized observation system for various modelling applications. The improved robust and reliable forecasting can help meteorological and climate services to better deliver tailored predictions and advice, including sub-seasonal to seasonal time scales, will take Arctic climate prediction beyond seasons and to teleconnections over the Northern Hemisphere. Blue-Action will through its concerted efforts therefore contribute to the improvement of climate models to represent Arctic warming realistically and address its impact on regional and global atmospheric and oceanic circulation.

The PROCESS demonstrators will pave the way towards exascale data services that will accelerate innovation and maximise the benefits of these emerging data solutions. The main tangible outputs of PROCESS are five very large data service prototypes, implemented using a mature, modular, generalizable open source solution for user friendly exascale data. The services will be thoroughly validated in real-world settings, both in scientific research and in industry pilot deployments. To achieve these ambitious objectives, the project consortium brings together the key players in the new data-driven ecosystem: top-level HPC and big data centres, communities – such as Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project – with unique data challenges that the current solutions are unable to meet and experienced e-Infrastructure solution providers with an extensive track record of rapid application development. In addition to providing the service prototypes that can cope with very large data, PROCESS addresses the work programme goals by using the tools and services with heterogeneous use cases, including medical informatics, airline revenue management and open data for global disaster risk reduction. This diversity of user communities ensures that in addition to supporting communities that push the envelope, the solutions will also ease the learning curve for broadest possible range of user communities. In addition, the chosen open source strategy maximises the potential for uptake and reuse, together with mature software engineering practices that minimise the efforts needed to set up and maintain services based on the PROCESS software releases.