case study 3

New relationship with the CNRS

Scientists from France and Australia will collaborate on two multinational projects using xenon to search for dark matter particles.

Centre research on direct detection was showcased during a visit from France’s scientific governing body Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) to the Dark Matter Centre headquarters. The president of the CNRS visited the Centre as part of his visit to Australia to inaugurate CNRS in Oceania. We had presentations and represenations from UWA, UoS, SUT and UoM. We agreed to strengthen our ties with the CNRS to capitalise on the cotutelles, and collaborative research that is ongoing in the Centre.

The Melbourne CNRS Network in May also announced the successful recipients of the second call for proposals to establish joint PhD projects between the UoM and CNRS. One of the successful recipients was Elisabetta Barberio, with the project ‘Luminous Dark Matter searchers with XENONnT and DARWIN experiments’.

Professor Barberio will collaborate with Centre postdoc Jayden Newstead and Associate Investigator Sara Diglio from the Laboratoire de physique subatomique et des technologies associées (SUBATECH). Sara attended the CDM annual workshop and gave a keynote titled Prospects on Noble gas experiments (Xe and Ar).

The joint project was one example of the international collaboration happening at the Centre.

Centre postdoc Jeremy Bourhill will also be working with French scientists, using 3D printing to produce previously off-limit devices for quantum information processing, generating unique states of light, and dark matter detection.

“This research aims to provide technologies that will fundamentally alter the scope of problems we can solve computationally, the types of properties and scale of objects we can sense, and answer questions about the fundamental nature of the universe,” he said.

Associate Investigator Sara Diglio and Elisabetta Barberio