Cold atoms in space: community workshop summary and proposed road-map

We summarise the discussions at a virtual Community Workshop on Cold Atoms in Space concerning the status of cold atom technologies, the prospective scientific and societal opportunities offered by their deployment in space, and the developments needed before cold atoms could be operated in space. The cold atom technologies discussed include atomic clocks, quantum gravimeters and accelerometers, and atom interferometers. Prospective applications include metrology, geodesy and measurement of terrestrial mass change due to, e.g., climate change, and fundamental science experiments such as tests of the equivalence principle, searches for dark matter, measurements of gravitational waves and tests of quantum mechanics. We review the current status of cold atom technologies and outline the requirements for their space qualification, including the development paths and the corresponding technical milestones, and identifying possible pathfinder missions to pave the way for missions to exploit the full potential of cold atoms in space. Finally, we present a first draft of a possible road-map for achieving these goals, that we propose for discussion by the interested cold atom, Earth Observation, fundamental physics and other prospective scientific user communities, together with the European Space Agency (ESA) and national space and research funding agencies.publishedVersio

Cold atoms in space: community workshop summary and proposed road-map

We summarise the discussions at a virtual Community Workshop on Cold Atoms in Space concerning the status of cold atom technologies, the prospective scientific and societal opportunities offered by their deployment in space, and the developments needed before cold atoms could be operated in space. The cold atom technologies discussed include atomic clocks, quantum gravimeters and accelerometers, and atom interferometers. Prospective applications include metrology, geodesy and measurement of terrestrial mass change due to, e.g., climate change, and fundamental science experiments such as tests of the equivalence principle, searches for dark matter, measurements of gravitational waves and tests of quantum mechanics. We review the current status of cold atom technologies and outline the requirements for their space qualification, including the development paths and the corresponding technical milestones, and identifying possible pathfinder missions to pave the way for missions to exploit the full potential of cold atoms in space. Finally, we present a first draft of a possible road-map for achieving these goals, that we propose for discussion by the interested cold atom, Earth Observation, fundamental physics and other prospective scientific user communities, together with the European Space Agency (ESA) and national space and research funding agencies

Cold atoms in space: community workshop summary and proposed road-map

We summarise the discussions at a virtual Community Workshop on Cold Atoms in Space concerning the status of cold atom technologies, the prospective scientific and societal opportunities offered by their deployment in space, and the developments needed before cold atoms could be operated in space. The cold atom technologies discussed include atomic clocks, quantum gravimeters and accelerometers, and atom interferometers. Prospective applications include metrology, geodesy and measurement of terrestrial mass change due to, e.g., climate change, and fundamental science experiments such as tests of the equivalence principle, searches for dark matter, measurements of gravitational waves and tests of quantum mechanics. We review the current status of cold atom technologies and outline the requirements for their space qualification, including the development paths and the corresponding technical milestones, and identifying possible pathfinder missions to pave the way for missions to exploit the full potential of cold atoms in space. Finally, we present a first draft of a possible road-map for achieving these goals, that we propose for discussion by the interested cold atom, Earth Observation, fundamental physics and other prospective scientific user communities, together with the European Space Agency (ESA) and national space and research funding agencies

How much leaf area do insects eat? A data set of insect herbivory sampled globally with a standardized protocol

Herbivory is ubiquitous. Despite being a potential driver of plant distribution and performance, herbivory remains largely undocumented. Some early attempts have been made to review, globally, how much leaf area is removed through insect feeding. Kozlov et al., in one of the most comprehensive reviews regarding global patterns of herbivory, have compiled published studies regarding foliar removal and sampled data on global herbivory levels using a standardized protocol. However, in the review by Kozlov et al., only 15 sampling sites, comprising 33 plant species, were evaluated in tropical areas around the globe. In Brazil, which ranks first in terms of plant biodiversity, with a total of 46,097 species, almost half (43%) being endemic, a single data point was sampled, covering only two plant species. In an attempt to increase knowledge regarding herbivory in tropical plant species and to provide the raw data needed to test general hypotheses related to plant–herbivore interactions across large spatial scales, we proposed a joint, collaborative network to evaluate tropical herbivory. This network allowed us to update and expand the data on insect herbivory in tropical and temperate plant species. Our data set, collected with a standardized protocol, covers 45 sampling sites from nine countries and includes leaf herbivory measurements of 57,239 leaves from 209 species of vascular plants belonging to 65 families from tropical and temperate regions. They expand previous data sets by including a total of 32 sampling sites from tropical areas around the globe, comprising 152 species, 146 of them being sampled in Brazil. For temperate areas, it includes 13 sampling sites, comprising 59 species

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements

The Comet Interceptor Mission

Here we describe the novel, multi-point Comet Interceptor mission. It is dedicated to the exploration of a little-processed long-period comet, possibly entering the inner Solar System for the first time, or to encounter an interstellar object originating at another star. The objectives of the mission are to address the following questions: What are the surface composition, shape, morphology, and structure of the target object? What is the composition of the gas and dust in the coma, its connection to the nucleus, and the nature of its interaction with the solar wind? The mission was proposed to the European Space Agency in 2018, and formally adopted by the agency in June 2022, for launch in 2029 together with the Ariel mission. Comet Interceptor will take advantage of the opportunity presented by ESA’s F-Class call for fast, flexible, low-cost missions to which it was proposed. The call required a launch to a halo orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 point. The mission can take advantage of this placement to wait for the discovery of a suitable comet reachable with its minimum ΔV capability of 600 ms−1. Comet Interceptor will be unique in encountering and studying, at a nominal closest approach distance of 1000 km, a comet that represents a near-pristine sample of material from the formation of the Solar System. It will also add a capability that no previous cometary mission has had, which is to deploy two sub-probes – B1, provided by the Japanese space agency, JAXA, and B2 – that will follow different trajectories through the coma. While the main probe passes at a nominal 1000 km distance, probes B1 and B2 will follow different chords through the coma at distances of 850 km and 400 km, respectively. The result will be unique, simultaneous, spatially resolved information of the 3-dimensional properties of the target comet and its interaction with the space environment. We present the mission’s science background leading to these objectives, as well as an overview of the scientific instruments, mission design, and schedule

26th Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting (CNS*2017): Part 3 - Meeting Abstracts - Antwerp, Belgium. 15–20 July 2017

This work was produced as part of the activities of FAPESP Research,\ud Disseminations and Innovation Center for Neuromathematics (grant\ud 2013/07699-0, S. Paulo Research Foundation). NLK is supported by a\ud FAPESP postdoctoral fellowship (grant 2016/03855-5). ACR is partially\ud supported by a CNPq fellowship (grant 306251/2014-0)