SchoGaN is a four-year proposal for an ambitious research project focused on the use of III-V Nitride materials to achieve GaN Schottky diode and associated frequency multiplier enabling the future development of high power terahertz (THz) frequency sources. The partners of SchoGaN project are three academic laboratories (CNRS-IEMN, CNRS-CRHEA and the LERMA) and a SME (T-Waves Technologies). The consortium brings the required know-how and expertise to achieve significant breakthroughs in the field of frequency multiplier and leading to the realization of high power, tunable, compact, portable, broadband, non-cryogenic THz sources vitally required for many new applications. In this consortium, IEMN and CRHEA bring a strong expertise developed for these last 20 years in III-Nitride technology and material growth, respectively. LERMA brings strong expertise in design, waveguide modelling and fabrication, and assembly of frequency multiplier circuit. T-Waves Technologies will evaluate our THz sources for industrial applications in imaging. The consortium is fully complementary to reach the objectives. It is recognized in our community that the terahertz frequencies range starts at the transition between millimeter and sub-millimeter wave, i.e. 0.3 THz and spreads up to the 10 THz. This large range offers a wide variety of applications: sensing molecules, security, imaging, space science and imaging, non-destructive testing, medical science, very high data rate wireless communications... However, to grow massively, these applications required low cost, compact, portable, reliable and non-cryogenic THz sources and, the most important, of high power level. Today, many technologies are in competition towards low cost and mass-market applications where THz sources are already a vital element. Actually, between the solid state world with the transistor and the optic world with the laser, we note, between 300 GHz and 10 THz, into the famous "THz Gap", that the availability of usable, effective, high power THz sources is tremendously lacking. The objective of the SchoGaN project is to respond to this lack. The only technology that has proven its potentials in the THz range relies on the frequency multiplier principle. The GaAs-based frequency multiplier chains delivers state of the art performance with an output power of 18 µW obtained at 2.58 THz and about 1 mW at 1 THz. However, even if these results are impressive, a large access to these power THz sources remains critical for mass-market applications. Despite the improvements in many technological and design aspects, all solutions cannot overcome the GaAs intrinsic electric field breakdown limitation and the limited thermal conductivity which both represent now the definitive bottlenecks. The search of a candidate exhibiting a high breakdown electric field combined with high thermal conductivity is therefore crucial. This candidate is the Gallium Nitride (GaN). The first bottleneck will be surpassed by its high breakdown electric field, 10 times larger than GaAs. The second bottleneck will be managed thanks to GaN and SiC substrate which present a thermal conductivity 3 and 10 times larger than GaAs, respectively. Both, high breakdown electric field and high thermal conductivity will increase the power handling capabilities of devices resulting in a high output power. It has been shown that the power handling capability of a GaN Schottky diode is almost one order of magnitude larger than its GaAs counterpart. The project addresses THz power sources based on the multiplication chain principle using Gallium Nitride Schottky diode. The signal generation using GaN Schottky diodes is expected to deliver an output power one order of magnitude higher than the current reference. That represents a technological breakthrough towards the next generation of THz sources based on multiplier principle. We target to reach 15 mW of power at 600 GHz, about 10 times the current state of the art.

Qu-Test is a partnership of European testbeds for quantum technology, which is composed of distributed infrastructures with globally unique equipment and competencies across Europe. The goal of the partnership is to provide European industry with the necessary support in terms of infrastructure and know-how to move faster to the market and create a robust supply chain for the quantum technology market. The partnership is aligned along three testbeds: quantum computing, quantum communication, quantum sensing. In more detail, the Quantum Computing Testbed will measure, characterise and validate cryogenic quantum devices, cryogenic qubits such as superconducting and semiconducting qubits, photonics qubits and ion traps provided by European industry, with an increasing service maturity and targeting larger quantum processors during the course of the FPA. The Quantum Communication Testbed will characterise devices for Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) and Quantum Random Number Generation (QRNG) and provide design and prototyping services to support innovation in the supply chain of quantum communication technologies. Finally, the Quantum Sensing Testbed will benchmark sensing and metrology instruments provided by industry and use a large suite of quantum sensors (clocks, gravimeters, magnetometers, imagers) to validate industrial use cases aiming at generating new business cases for quantum sensing and metrology devices. The three testbeds will be coordinated by a Single Entry Point (SEP) that will receive the requests of industry and direct them efficiently to the right testbed infrastructure. With additional services of IPR support, business coaching and innovation management, Qu-Test supports the European quantum industry with a holistic one-stop-shop to move the full ecosystem forward.

Methane (CH4) emissions have to be reduced to reach the Paris Agreement objectives. Modeling approaches assimilating observations are expected to verify the effectiveness of mitigation policies by monitoring sectoral and regional emission changes based on atmospheric observations. These “top-down” approaches are appropriate to estimate CH4 net flux at the surface; however, they have critical weak points: an incomplete prior knowledge of CH4 natural emissions, and difficulties in disentangling overlapping sources from different sectors. The main natural sources of CH4 are inland water emissions: wetlands, peatlands, lakes, ponds… While global wetland emissions gridded products exist, none are available for other inland water systems, which are thus missing in the prior description of emissions forcing top-down approaches. Global estimates of inland water systems remain not consistent in terms of localization and magnitude. Thus, dynamical maps of these areas and their emissions based on same data sets, are necessary to ensure consistency and reduce uncertainties in CH4 emission estimates. 3D top-down approaches retrieving CH4 emissions are based on total CH4 observations only, at surface stations or from remote sensing, and solve for net fluxes at the surface or few individual sectors. However, CH4 observations are not sufficient to properly distinguished between sectors. Isotopic or co-emitted species such as ethane for oil and gas emissions, or carbon monoxide for biomass burning, could help better discriminating the emissions from different sectors and their trend. For this, the project coordinator’s team has newly developed an inverse system (CIF-LMDz-SACs) that integrates isotopic observations to constrain CH4 emissions. The AMB-M3 project aims at 1) producing the first consistent gridded product of CH4 emissions from wetlands, peatlands and lakes to be used for CH4 sources analysis and as input to global top-down models, and 2) discriminating CH4 sources by improving the capabilities of an inverse systems. In the first work package we will develop dynamical and consistent gridded CH4-centric inland water maps including information on vegetation and soil types (carbon content), over 1995-2020 based on the GIEMS-2 inundated data set. GIEMS-2, covering already 1995-2015, provides inundated extent and dynamics under dense vegetation, produces consistent surface water in semi-arid regions and accounts for satellite inter-calibration issues. Then CH4 emissions based on this new product will be estimated by upscaling density fluxes from the literature. Developments on CH4 emissions from wetlands and northern peatlands have been done in different versions of the ORCHIDEE land surface model. For the project, they will be integrated into the trunk version of the ORCHIDEE model to better simulate CH4 emissions and compared to previous estimations. The second work package will demonstrate the potential of adding ethane and carbon monoxide within the CIF-LMDz-SACs surface data constrained global inversions. Analyses will be performed to optimally combine different tracer constraints from both surface and satellite observations to take advantage of all available observations for regional analysis. Finally, AMB-M3 project will provide new estimates of CH4 sources and sinks at the global and regional scales over 2010-2020 based on up-to-date bottom-up (ORCHIDEE) estimates and top-down modelling system.