• The chips, 10,000 Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), are one of the main components of the cameras to be installed in the Large Size Telescopes that will be built in La Palma.
• The ASICs have been designed, produced and tested at the Institute of Cosmos Science of the Barcelona University (ICCUB) Technology Unit and delivered to the University of Tokyo through a contract signed by the Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya (IEEC).

The ICCUB-IEEC has delivered to Tokyo University more than 10,000 ASICs to equip the cameras of 3 Large Size Telescopes of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). These ASICs, called PACTA, were chosen among different prototypes to become a common component for both the Large Size Telescopes (LSTs) and the Medium Size Telescopes (MSTs). The ASICs have been designed, produced, and tested by the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB), a unit of the IEEC.

CTA is a project to build the next generation ground-based observatory for gamma-ray astronomy at very-high energies. The observatory will consist of two arrays of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) of different sizes, based on proven technology and deployed on an unprecedented scale on the northern and southern hemispheres. These IACTs will detect the Cherenkov radiation coming from gamma rays that penetrate our atmosphere and disintegrate, creating cascades of matter and anti-matter particles.

The Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos (ORM), La Palma, Spain, will host CTA-North, which will consist on 4 LSTs and 10 MSTs. The first LST is currently being built at ORM and already contains a first batch of 2000 PACTA ASICs produced by ICCUB and delivered in 2014 to Tokyo University, the institution in charge of the electronics of the cameras for the LSTs. The first LST will be inaugurated and have its first light at the end of 2018, with commissioning and first science in 2019. The 10,000 PACTA ASICs produced, successfully tested, and delivered now to the University of Tokyo, through a contract signed by IEEC, will be used to build the cameras of the 3 remaining LSTs of CTA-North.

Different groups of IEEC have been working on the CTA project since 2008. In particular, the ICCUB-IEEC team has developed several ASICs for different cameras, based on previous experience gained after participation in the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment. In particular, the chip PACTA is a PreAmplifier specifically designed to readout photomuliplier tubes operated at low gain, fulfilling stringent requirements in terms of bandwidth (500 MHz), dynamic range (15 bits), input signal range (up to 20 mA peak current), low power consumption (120 mW), and low noise (single photon detection).These stringent requirements were not available in commercial off the shelf components. The quality control of the chips produced by the IEEC-ICCUB team, performed by a robotic system, showed an excellent yield: above 99% of the ASICs fulfilled all requirements.

Figures

	Figure 1. PACTA die microphotography. Die area is 2 mm2
	Figure 2. PACTA chip packaged in QFN32 package.
	Figure 3. PACTA block diagram
	Figure 4. Single photoelectron spectrum measurement at a photomultiplier tube gain of 40,000
	Figure 5. Dynamic range of PACTA extends to more than 5000 photons with 0.2 photon resolution, i.e. a dynamic of about 15 bits.
	Figure 6. Automated test bench for chip quality control. Each try contains about 500 chips.

Video about robot operation

Contact

David Gascon (dgascon@icc.ub.edu)

Gaia’s second data release will include positions and brightnesses for nearly 1.7 billion stars, distances, proper motions and colours for 1.3 billion of them, velocities along the line of sight for a subset of seven million, and brightness measurements for half a million variable stars. It also extends the positions and brightnesses to more than half a million quasars, which will allow the celestial reference frame to be fully defined for the first time using optical observations.

Programme:

Aula Magna Enric Casassas -Physics Faculty UB
Wednesday, 25 April, 12:00

• Opening. Dr. Joan Elias, rector of the UB.
  
• Introducció a la missió Gaia. Dra. Carme Jordi, professor Dpt. FQA & ICCUB researcher (IEEC-UB)
  
• L’arxiu de Gaia: l’inici d’una nova era. Dr. Jordi Portell, Chief of the engineering team GaiaUB, ICCUB (IEEC-UB)
  
• La Galàxia que ens descobreix Gaia: primers resultats. Dra. Teresa Antoja. Postdoc Marie Curie a ICCUB (IEEC-UB)
  
• Talk. Dr. Lluís Garrido, director of the ICCUB
  
• Talk. Dr. Ignasi Ribas, director of the EEC.
  
• Talk. Dra. Marina Villegas, Director of the Agencia Estatal de Investigación of the MINECO.
  
• Questions.
  
• Closing Dr. Joan Elias, rector of the UB.
  

UB News

• The creation of SOMMa will allow centers and units to increase their impact, promote collaboration and enrich the whole Spanish I+-D system.
• SOMMa has presented the document “Informe SOMMa: Acciones necesarias para salvaguardar la competitividad de la ciencia” to ask the Spanish political class to find lasting solutions to several administrative problems.
  

Apart from asking for a firm commitment concerning funding in science, SOMMa showed the existence of several administrative issues that jeopardize the I+D system and require political solutions. During the event, the report “Informe SOMMa: Acciones necesarias para salvaguardar la competitividad de la ciencia” (“SOMMa Report: Necessary actions to safeguard competiveness in science”) was presented. This document seeks to draw politicians’ attention to these issues and urges them to find lasting solutions.

• [El Norte de Castilla), 10/03/2018
• [RAC1 - Versió RAC1 (Sr Bohigues], 09/03/2018
• [Blogs ABC - cosas del cerebro], 06/03/2018
  
• [Diario 16], 05/03/2018
• [Gestiona Radio - Programa "Quédate"], 05/03/2018
• [RNE. Viajamos esperando], 24/02/2018
  
• [Radio Euskadi. La mecánica del caracol], 23/02/2018
  
• [La Vanguardia. La contra], 22/02/2018
  
• [El Nacional.cat], 11/02/2018
  
• (El Periódico), 02/02/2018

Today the ICCUB is hosting a new edition of the Masterclass in Particle Physics, held at the ICCUB under the name of Taller de Física de Partícules. A second edition of this activity will be held on 16 March. Altogether, 160 bachelor students from 149 different Catalan high schools will take a day off from school to come to the ICCUB and dive into the actual data. ICCUB researchers will introduce them to the tiniest building blocks of the universe and to the accelerators and detectors which probe these mysterious particles. By analyzing real data from experiments at CERN´s Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, students will get a taste of how modern physics research works.

Particle physics is one of the most important emerging fields in science. The discovery of the Higgs boson at the LHC in summer 2012 led to a large public interest in understanding particle physics. In a daylong Masterclass, high school students can explore this field of cutting-edge physics by working with authentic data from experiments at the LHC under the supervision of physicists.

The basic idea of the program is to let students work as much as possible like real scientists. Four experiments - ATLAS, CMS, ALICE, and LHCb - have made data for educational use within the program. The data used at the ICCUB will correspond to the LHCb experiment, to which researchers of the Experimental Particle Physics group have made important technical and scientific contributions. Similarly to what occurs in real scientific collaborative environments, the activity will include a connection in a videoconference with physicists at CERN and other student groups from around the world to discuss their results. At the end of the session, The students visit the laboratories of the Physics Faculty of the University of Barcelona, headquarters of the ICCUB.

The Masterclass at ICCUB is part of an annual program called International Masterclasses. Scientists at about 210 universities and laboratories host Masterclasses at their home institutions. The Masterclasses this year are organized for February 15 through March 28 in more than 50 countries worldwide. The worldwide participation reflects the international collaboration in particle physics.

International Masterclasses are organized by the International Particle Physics Outreach Group (IPPOG). IPPOG is an independent group of outreach representatives from countries involved in the research at CERN and other leading research laboratories. The group’s goal is to make particle physics more accessible to the public.

The International Day of Women and Girls in Science will be celebrated on 11th February.

On the occasion of this event a lot of activities are organized to vindicate the role of women in scientific research. The Institute of Cosmos Sciences and the Department of Quantum Physics and Astrophysics join this celebration participating in different activities, some of them addressed to general public and others to educative centers:

• Photograph of the Gaia researcher women attending the Florence CU5 meeting
  
• Chatting with an astronomer woman
  
• Board of astronomer women
  
• Talk "Investigadores en física nuclear" by A. Ramos, INS Arnau Cadell, 14/02/2018
  
• Opening talk and guided visit to the exhibition "Telescopi A. Català", by F. Figueras, exhibition room"Agrupa", Molins de Rey, 13/02/02018
  

• Exhibition "Investigadores en Física nuclear", INS Arnau Cadell, 04-20/02/2018
• Exhibition "Amb A d'AstrònomA", INS secretari Coloma, 25/01/2018-15/02/2018)
• Exhibition "Telescopi A. Català", exhibition room"Agrupa", Molins de Rey, 13-23/02/02018 (openned to general public)

You can find further information about other activities organized on the website.

Related news

(El Periódico)

[El Nacional.cat]

The SPRG award is granted yearly at the traditional Black Holes Workshop to a young researcher who is a member of the Society. Miguel Zilhão is a young physicist from Porto, Portugal, working in numerical relativity and computational physics. He completed his PhD degree in 2012, under the supervision of Profs. Carlos Herdeiro and Vitor Cardoso. He moved on to a postdoctoral position at CCRG-RIT, Rochester, with Prof. Manuela Campanelli, and then to Universitat de Barcelona (Department of Quantum Physics and Astrophysics & ICCUB), under the supervision of Prof. David Mateos. Since September 2017 he has been an FCT researcher at CENTRA-IST, Lisbon.

Published articles

https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.93.124072
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FJHEP10%282016%29155
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FJHEP01%282017%29026
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FJHEP06%282017%29129

• Complete Astrometry (positions, proper motions and parallax angles) for 1,300 million stars (up to a magnitude of G= 21).
  
• Radial velocity for more than 5 million stars (G betwen 3 and 12).
  
• Magnitude G for 1,500 million stars.
  
• Magnitude G_BP & G_Rp for 1,100 million stars.
  
• Astrometric Data of 1,300 already-known asteroids.
  
• Effective temperatures for 150 million stars (G<17).
  
• More than 500,000 light curves of variable stars.
  

Last Sunday December 3rd, at a ceremony in California, the Breakthrough Prize in fundamental physics was awarded to the WMAP "For detailed maps of the early universe that greatly improved our knowledge of the evolution of the cosmos and the fluctuations that seeded the formation of galaxies". Funded by private sponsors, the Breakthrough Prizes recognize the achievements of scientists in the fields of Life Sciences, Fundamental Physics and Mathematics with awards of $3 million prizes, the largest individual monetary awards in science.

Launched in 2001, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) mapped the cosmic microwave background (CMB) with unprecedented precision during 9 years, opening a new era of quantitative cosmology that lead to the establishment of the Standard Model of Cosmology. Among other discoveries, the interpretation of WMPA data allowed scientists to determine age of the universe (about 13.8 billion years), its rate of accelerating expansion (about 70 kilometers per second per megaparsec) and its basic composition (about 5% "normal” matter, 24 % dark matter and 71 % dark energy).

Licia Verde, ICREA researcher at ICCUB (IEEC-UB), joined the WMAP team in 2001, when she was a Chandra Fellow in Princeton University. Among other contributions, she contributed to the cosmological analysis and lead the methodology paper in the 2003 release, the sixth most cited paper in the field of Astronomy and Astrophysics according to Web of Science.
This is not the first time WMAP team has been awarded such an important prize. The team also holds the prestigious Shaw Prize for Astronomy (2010) and the Gruber Prize in Cosmology (2012).

Links:

Breakthrough Prize 2018 Ceremony:

• Ceremony: https://breakthroughprize.org/News/41
• Laureates of the WMAP Science Team: https://breakthroughprize.org/Laureates/1/L3809
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKqzBGE5w-0 (Time 6:13)

WMAP

• Overview: https://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/