Presentation


In order to be able to react to the different engagements on the projects, CPPM is equipped with differents equipments in various technical domains in electronics, computing and mechanics. Those equipments are operated by the technical services in the projects. Some of these technical tools are merged into platforms and technical plateaus:

  • LSPM : Provence Mediterranée Submarine Laboratory, submarine platform including connexion cables and junction boxes (including MEUST infrastructure). The Antares detector, the KM3NeT/ORCA detector and a new instrumentation line to study marine environment (NUMerEnv) are connected.
  • PCS : Scientific Calculation Platerform, including the LHC Computing Grid TIER-2 node and the M3AMU project to give access to hybrid computing equipments developed with CCIAM (Centre de calcul intensif d’Aix Marseille).
  • PI : Infrared Plateau
  • PR : Radon Plateau

Laboratoire Sous-marin Provence Méditerranée


Laboratoire Sous-marin Provence Méditerranée

Platform Illustration © Mathilde Destelle
Platform Infrastructures

The Laboratoire Sous-marin Provence Méditerranée (LSPM) is a national research platform of IN2P3. Aix-Marseille University and Ifremer participate in the piloting of this multidisciplinary infrastructure oriented towards multidisciplinary research and scientific culture. The Marseille Particle Physics Centre (CPPM) is the host laboratory for this platform, consisting essentially of an underwater infrastructure, installed at a depth of 2,500 meters, 40 kilometers south of Toulon, with real-time data transmission from the various instruments to the control rooms on land (La Seyne-sur-Mer, Marseille). The LSPM platform hosts the KM3NeT ORCA neutrino detector and EMSO environmental sensors. Other underwater connection links are available for new users.

Underwater infrastructure:

  • electro-optical cables for shore connection,

  • junction boxes for interfacing underwater instrumentation,

  • long base acoustic positioning system,

  • junction box dedicated to environmental measures.

Land infrastructure with a multidisciplinary and educational vocation:

  • Main control room in La Seyne-sur-Mer: real-time control of experiments, data acquisition and processing, high-speed connection to other control and storage centers,

  • Remote control room at the CPPM: showroom, reception, multimedia installations.

The platform was initiated through the MEUST/NUMerEnv subsea insfrastructure (MEUST), and hosts the French site of the international KM3NeT experiment. It also represents the West-Ligure node of EMSO for environmental studies conducted by the Technical Division of the National Institute of Sciences of the Universe (DT-INSU) of the CNRS, the Mediterranean Institute of Oceanology (MIO), the Computer and Systems Laboratory (LIS) and Géoazur. LSPM is the second generation of submarine infrastructure, after the one deployed in the framework of the ANTARES experiment.

The project is financed within the framework of the State-Region Planning Contract, with the support of the European Union with the European Regional Development Fund, the CNRS National Institute of Nuclear and Particle Physics (IN2P3) and the Regional Delegation for Research and Technology.

HTC/HPC platform


HTC/HPC platform

The EGI-INSPIRE project, financed by the European Commission, is the follow-up of the original EGEE projects which were completed in May 2010. The feasibility of a production level computing grid infrastructure was successfully demonstrated. The EGI infrastructure, based on national initiatives NGI France-Grille, provides European industry and research, access with this grid infrastructure, which is already extending over 260 sites in over 50 countries.

The project will focus on several primary goals:

  • To combine national, regional and dedicated grids in a single unique infrastructure to serve scientific research and to construct a solid computing grid for commercial research and industry;
  • To continually improve the software quality so as to provide a reliable service to users;
  • To attract new scientific and industrial users by allowing them to discover the great potential offered by the computing grid and to ensure that they receive a high quality of training and support.

The grid makes use of the European Union’s high bandwidth network, GEANT, and exploits the vast expertise accumulated in the many national and international grid projects, past and present.

The CPPM computing departement is running a LCG Tier-2 grid node. The node aims to serve the analysis requirements or the laboratory’s physicists as well as those of other scientific researchers in Marseille, as well as contributing computing and storage elements to the grid. A new project is under study. It should offer a large computing infrastructure (about 2000 cores) and subsequent storage (about 1 PB) to different laboratories located on the Luminy Campus.

The High-Performance Computing infrastructure (mainly Grid computing until now - France-Grille and Tier 2 of LCG France), is developing a Cloud modality for the entire AMU scientific community. This will be possible thanks to an AMU project carried out in collaboration with the AMU HPC mesocentre through CPER and FEDER fundings. The project will set up a shared but distributed platform (Grid and Cloud in Luminy) and HPC (in Saint-Jérôme) accessed in a unified way for AMU users through the DIRAC software.

Plateaux


Infrared Plateau

The Euclid project was an opportunity for CPPM to acquire experience and strong skills in the design and realization of near infrared benches (working under secondary vacuum up to 70K) as well as expertise on hybrid IR pixel detectors of the H2RG type (persistence, gain, non-linearity, IPC).

The Infrared Platform allows the characterization of SWIR infrared detectors and benefits from a dedicated clean room (ISO7 - ISO5) equipped with two dedicated cryostats whose excellent quality has been demonstrated during the characterization of Euclid flight detectors.

CPPM's expertise in the field of infrared is now recognized internationally, thanks in particular to papers presented at conferences (SPIE, CNES), scientific publications, numerous Euclid Consortium-ESA-NASA meetings and contact with the LabEx FOCUS.

CPPM is also responsible for the characterization of the ALFA detector produced by the LynRed company, which will equip the infrared channel of the COLIBRI telescope for ground tracking of the SVOM experiment.

Radon Plateau

The objective of the Radon Plateau is to study the main problems associated with radon-induced background noise in low-energy neutrino physics and direct search for Dark Matter experiments, and to achieve a filtration quality of the order of microBq/m3.

With the advent of new projects that are more and more demanding in terms of background noise, we wish to deepen our knowledge of the phenomena of radon emanation, transport and capture, in particular environments (heavy gases, very low temperatures, etc.) with the extreme sensitivities required in future projects. The background noise induced by radon and its progeny is very often the most difficult component to eliminate and the ultimate limitation for a large number of experiments.

To address this issue, the interdisciplinary Radon platform hosts national and international experimental teams involved in various research projects for which radon is one of the main problems. An evolution is envisaged to regroup under the aegis of a national platform the expertise of the "low noise" type.

The Radon technical platform has the following equipment: Ge detector, adsorption measurement bench, diffusion chambers at ambient temperature, cryogenic system -85° C, RAD7 radon detector, etc.