Annual meeting of the QAFCA project

From May 27 to 29, 2026, the QAFCA project under the PEPR Quantum organized the 2026 edition of its annual conference. About thirty people gathered at the Laboratoire Collisions Agrégats Réactivité (LCAR) to discuss the project’s progress and potential synergies, particularly within the National Quantum Strategy.

Led by Arnaud Landragin, a CNRS research director at the Laboratoire Temps Espace (LTE), QAFCA is developing compact, portable cold-atom sensors to measure the gravitational field. This technology has direct societal applications in various fields, including climate change analysis, natural disaster prediction, civil engineering, and CO2 storage.

Presentations by QAFCA members

Introduction to the event by Arnaud Landragin

LTE Gradiometer by Léo Rol, PhD student at Observatoire de Paris-PSL at LTE

Measuring the acceleration using BECs in microgravity in the double diffraction regime by Romain Calviac, post-doc at Laboratoire Photonique Numérique & Nanosciences (LP2N)

Scaling Up Matter-Wave Interferometry. Large Momentum Transfer Interferometer: an update by Alexandre Gauguet, lecturer-researcher at Université de Toulouse at LCAR

Symmetric Large Momentum Transfer (LMT) beamsplitter in an optical lattice by Mona Ghazal, PhD student at Sorbonne Université at Laboratoire Kastler Brossel (LKB)

Strapdown multiaxes quantum accelerometer for onboard applications by Guillaume Lenogue, PhD student at Institut d’Optique Graduate School at LP2N

Towards continuous measurements using a cold-atoms gyroscope in a double-diffraction regime, by Romain Duverger, post-doc at Observatoire de Paris-PSL at LTE

Miniaturized multiaxes quantum accelerometer by Baptiste Monnereau, engineer at LP2N

Phase-sensitive microwave quantum detection of cold atoms by Maï Lemercier, PhD student CNRS at LTE

Advanced on the implementation of the Delta-kick Squeezing protocol for acceleration measurements in free fall atom interferometer by Nathan Niess, PhD student at Observatoire de Paris-PSL at LTE

Implementation of “Local measurement scheme of gravitational curvature using atom interferometer by Sélyan Beldjoudi, PhD student at Université de Toulouse at LCAR

Ellipse fitting for differential interferometers with squeezed states by Annie Pichery, CNRS post-doc at LTE

Presentations by partners

Presentation of AtomQtrl by Johan Boullet (Naquidis Center)

Presentation of ReNaPack by Hugues Granier (LAAS)

Electromagnetic field sensors using hot and cold Rydberg atoms, CARAMELS project under the PEPR Quantum, presented via video conference by Sylvain Schwartz, research director at ONERA, and Fabien Bretenaker, CNRS research director at Lumière, Matière et Interfaces (LuMIn)

Pharao/ACES mission by François-Xavier Esnault (CNES)

A poster session was also held at the end of the first day to highlight the younger generations’ involvement in the project. Participants also had the opportunity to tour the LCAR and observe demonstrations of the work being conducted there as part of the QAFCA project.