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Bronchial mucus is a hydrogel secreted at the surface of the bronchi to protect them from inhaled contaminants. It is continually transported by the collective beat of cilia that cover the bronchial epithelium, and by cough, a violent air flow capable of dragging mucus plugs away. In COPD, expected

In many different systems including earthquakes, granular faults and subcritical rupture, energy is slowly stored and released by sudden scale-invariant avalanches (SIA). The existence of time clustering and a little memory of past events are also usual features of the dynamics, which, besides the r

How do magnetic fields, either spontaneous or induced, affect the behavior of high energy-density plasmas? How can they be utilized to improve the prospects for inertial fusion energy, and the understanding, through scaled experiments, of observable astrophysical phenomena such as stellar flares, ac

Self-assembly is a key feature of living cells, which organize their basic components into complex machines based on their mutual interactions. Most of the time, it brings well-adjusted parts together into functional structures such as the ribosome or viral capsids. In other cases however, objects t

Impressive recent advances in quantum fluids of light have highlighted photonic systems as one of the most promising platforms to explore quantum many-body physics in a new context that takes full advantage of powerful manipulation and diagnostic tools offered by optical techniques. This project aim

Anisotropic tissue deformation is a key process during animal development. However, the general robustness of such developmental processes is in stark contrast to a known instability of the homogeneously deforming state of active anisotropic materials. Within this project, we ask how active anisotro

Most microorganisms developed the ability to navigate in their environment in order to find their ecological niche and/or participate to symbiotic relations with other living species. In many instances, in biological fluids or in natural environments, the rheology of the surrounding fluids displays

Topological edge-states, such as the fractional S=1/2 spin excitations in the Haldane chain and the Majorana states in the Shiba chain, are protected against decoherence and constitute a possible platform for quantum information processing. The Haldane spin chain, an archetypal example of quantum ma

Detecting a temporal variation of the fundamental constants would challenge the standard model. Molecular absorption spectra are considered excellent probes to reveal such a variation. Some transition frequencies are expected to be shifted up or down in frequency when energy levels are very close to

Life and its emergence fundamentally depend on the conversion of environmental free energy into cellular decrease of entropy – a stricture imposed by the 2nd law of thermodynamics. This biological free energy conversion (bioenergetics) is performed by an ensemble of metalloenzymes which carry out in

Most of our knowledge of bacteria comes from populations of individual, free-swimming cells. Yet, most bacteria on earth exist within biofilms, non-motile and physiologically distinct communities of cells. Biofilms provide significant protection against biological, chemical, and physical stresses.

This project unites cutting-edge advances in spectroscopy, chemistry and simulation to engineer and directly visualise the electronic photodynamics of a new class of organic light harvesting materials with applications in future photovoltaics, LEDs and devices for the implementation of condensed mat

Original properties have emerged from the study of quantum matter in high magnetic fields. The new phases that are discovered as higher fields are made available lay the groundwork for future advances in quantum material science at low or even zero field. For instance, the quantum Hall effect, first

Cellular systems generate and sense large mechanical forces that play a central role during tissue and organ formation in the embryo. However, little is known about how these forces shape embryonic organs, mainly because of a lack of adapted tools to measure cellular forces locally within developing

With the huge progress in molecular biology and biochemistry, the study of cell function was possible with stripped-down systems and using soft matter concepts. The dynamic assembly of the visco-elastic cytoskeleton generates forces and movement of cells, a function called "cell motility". Fundament

Whether in aircraft flight or the transportation of fluids in pipelines, energy dissipation or turbulent drag can severely limit performance and cause undesired energy losses. An understanding of the variation of turbulent drag versus flow properties is still lacking despite a century of intense eff

Ions stored in a radio-frequency trap form a one-component plasma of finite size. Experimental control over the density of the ion cloud as well as its temperature through laser cooling allows its plasma parameter to be varied from a few units to several hundred in the same experimental setup. These

In this project we propose to formulate, implement and apply a novel theory for the description of correlated photoemission spectra (PES) based on the three-body Green’s function. Photoemission is a unique source of information about electronic structure and excitations in materials. Theory represen

TThis project will explore spin dynamics and ultra-fast processes in magnetic topological insulators. These very recent materials combine topological states and magnetic phases, making them compounds exhibiting remarkable properties: existence of quantum surface states; ferromagnetic phase; anormal

Viscous flows are ubiquitous in nature and displays vortices and coherent structures of various sizes. It is often thought that scales below the dissipative scale ? are irrelevant and do not even need to be considered by numerical simulations. Recent theoretical and experimental progresses however

Quantum materials are the cornerstones of many near-future applications including new computing chips, energy or quantum computing platforms. The success of these future applications depends heavily on a detailed understanding of the microscopic quantum phenomena at play. Unfortunately, the quantum

The ArtMat project is structured around two main objectives. The first one is of fundamental nature and will focus on studying the properties of solid / liquid and liquid / liquid interfaces in artificial magnetic systems presenting a phase coexistence. In particular, we will study how topological

The project will boost a new generation of experiments designed to identify a much sought-after paradigm of chiral superconductivity. Chiral superconductivity is central for most applications of topological superconductivity. Besides time-reversal symmetry breaking, chirality in the superconducting

Fusion energy is an ideal solution for sustainable non-intermittent electricity production. Accurate simulation of fusion plasma turbulence is required for reactor operation and control, but is either too slow or lacks accuracy with present techniques. This project aims to circumvent these conflic

Photons are great carriers of information but they usually don’t interact with one another. Atoms interact but are hard to manipulate and do not benefit from the toolbox of quantum optics for detecting quantum fluctuations and entanglement. Many approaches have been proposed to marry these two syste

Non-abelian (NA) anyons are particles beyond fermions and bosons whose exotic exchange statistics holds the key to decoherence-free quantum computation. They emerge as collective excitations in the fractional quantum Hall effect, but require a large magnetic field, an important drawback in view of t

Mouse embryonic stem cells can self-organize into 3D embryonic organoids called Gastruloids. We want to understand (1) how heterogeneities in cell properties (depending on gene expression) and at cell interfaces (adhesion and tension) control the local rheological properties of the tissue (2) how me

SUPERFAST aims at demonstrating novel spin transport and ultrafast dynamics coupling effects in heterostructures combining magnetic materials and unconventional superconductors (S). The pursued ideas have much interest within condensed-matter physics and in the nascent field of S spintronics. The ke

Understanding how solid materials break is a major issue, with challenging physics. Slow loading leads to creep or catastrophic rupture. Despite the major risks, no physics-based model predicts Earthquakes, and engineered structures require high safety margins. These difficulties are linked to hete

The nuclear fusion experiment ITER aims to demonstrate that a tokamak is able to produce 10 times more energy than it needs to run. A tokamak confines, heats and fuses a plasma of hydrogen isotopes (the fusion fuel mixture, D/T) in fusion products (He and neutron). Part of the fusion products (He) a

Recent progress in material synthesis opened novel perspectives to generate new classes of magnetic excitations stemming from the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. Our objective in the DeMIuRGe project is to understand and ultimately control how chiral interactions of the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya form

The addition of fibers to a granular material is an inexpensive, sustainable and efficient way to reinforce its mechanical resistance. This strategy, which mimic the effect of plant roots on soil, is widely used for civil engineering applications to reinforce soils against erosion and to develop hig

Turbulent thermal flows in convection cells are inhomogeneous and very complex to predict and to understand due to the variety and the strong coupling of the physical mechanisms at play. These mechanisms change depending on the regime, the flow location and the scale of interest. Thermal boundary la

Erosion is defined as the loss of mass of a solid phase under the action of a flow in a fluid. Two physical mechanisms are distinguished. Chemical erosion occurs, when the molecules and minerals forming the solid are dissolved into the liquid. Mechanical erosion acts when the flow is fast enough to

In optical levitation, light forces are harnessed to trap nano-objects and assemble opto-mechanical resonators with exceptional quality factors. Through a reduction of their thermal vibrations, levitating resonators can be cooled towards their motional ground state and, then, offer the mesmerizing o

Conformational dynamics of biomolecules are intimately related to their function. However, the monitoring of these multiscale dynamics, which can range from a few hundreds of femtoseconds to a few milliseconds, still remains an experimental challenge. In this respect, ultrafast pump-probe spectrosco

Ultrafast light excitation is expected to trigger new states in solids, which are not accessible by varying the pressure, temperature, or doping in standard thermodynamic equilibrium conditions. Ultrafast terahertz (THz) spectroscopy has been blooming for the last 20 years. Developments of new inte

The VORTECS (superfluid VORtex TurbulencE on a Curved Surface) project is a joint theory-experiment effort to investigate superfluid dynamics on the surface of a bubble. It aims first at evidencing long-wavelength Rossby waves and zonal (azimuthal) flows driven by a latitude-dependent Coriolis force

Until recently, it was commonly believed that superconducting cuprates become conventional Fermi-liquid metals upon overdoping the CuO2 plane at p > 0.27 hole/Cu. In fact, this overdoped region has been little studied in the past, so the above Fermi-liquid scenario was never verified in a systemati

Topological excitations emerge at the interface between phases of matter of different topological classes. As they inherit the mathematical resilience to disorder of their supporting topological phase, they are attractive for building highly coherent quantum bits robust to local disorder. Topologica

The recent progress in controlling the stacking of atomic sheets in van der Waals heterostructures has opened up new avenues for manipulating electronic properties by moiré superlattices, i.e. by long-wavelength periodic potential landscapes. In two-dimensional materials, a moiré superlattice, forme

Charge density waves are spatial periodic oscillations of the electronic density that are a feature of many families of superconductors. A recurring question in these systems is whether the charge density wave is an epiphenomenon that simply comes about fortuitously in a system that is already prone

We want to exploit the temporal compression and resulting intensity-boost of ultraintense laser waveforms upon reflection off plasma-mirrors. The great potential of these plasma-mirror sources has long been recognized and experimental support has accumulated, but an actual experimental demonstration

The fragmentation of a liquid phase by a gas flow happens through a cascade of coupled mechanisms. This process is ubiquitous to engineering applications that aim at producing a high-quality spray (cloud of droplets) and can be found in many situations in nature. Beyond a lack of understanding of t

Understanding the dynamics of quantum many-body systems is a central challenge of modern physics. In the past decade, remarkable progress has been made for isolated systems that undergo unitary dynamics. Yet, in reality, quantum systems are always coupled to their environment and the interplay betwe

In-vivo experiments demonstrated a strong difference of sensitivity of healthy vs unhealthy tissues to ionizing radiations when these are delivered within short and bright pulses. This so-called ultra-high dose rate radiotherapy (RT) or FLASH-RT has paved the way to a high-potential innovation in me