2018 general scientific meeting of the bps: april 11th in...

B Belgian Physical Society Magazine

1- 2018

2018 General Scientific Meeting of the BPS April 11th in UAntwerpen Research Activitities in Physics in Belgium

BΦ CONTENT

Editorial 2News 3BPS Scientific Meeting 2018 3BPS Best Master Thesis Awards 2018 3Featured Articles 5Research Activities in Astronomy and Astrophysics in Belgium(Y Fremat et al)

5

Research Activities in Plasma Physics in Belgium (R Weynants) 20Research Activities in Computational Physics in Belgium (XGonze amp G Rignanese)

25

Research Activities in Hard Condensed Matter and Semicon-ductor Physics in Belgium (E Janssens amp Y Bruynseraede)

35

Sponsors 51

BΦ - Belgian Physical Society MagazineEditor in ChiefFabrice Louche

Lay-outFabrice Louche Sabine Van Doorslaere

Belgische Natuurkunde VerenigingSocieacuteteacute Belge de Physique

vzwasblPresident

Jef Ongena

Vice-President Gilles De LentdeckerSecretary Jean-Claude Jodogne

Adjunct Secretary Fabrice LoucheAccountant Yves Caudano

Board Members Bart Cleuren Michele Coeck Evelyne Daubieacute Karen Feyen Ewald Janssens Raymond Koch Peter Schlagheck Niels SchoonJacques Tempere Michael Tytgat Xavier Urbain Lisanne Van Puyvelde Michel Voueacute Roger Weynants

BΦ - Belgian Physical Society Magazine - 012018 1

BΦ EDITORIAL

Hawking besides Newton in Westminster Abbey

Professor Stephen Hawking died peacefully on 14 March aged 76 at hishome in Cambridge precisely 139 years after the birthday of EinsteinHe was a brilliant and extraordinary mind with courage humour and anexemplary determination

Professor Hawking arrived at the University of Cambridge in 1962 as a PhDstudent In 1974 he became one of the youngest fellows of Britainrsquos mostprestigious scientific body the Royal Society at the age of 32 Five yearslater he was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at CambridgeUniversity Previous holders of this prestigious chair were the 17th-centuryBritish scientist Isaac Newton and the 20th century prodigy Paul Dirac

He was a scientist with a creative and nonconformist mind who explainedthe Big Bang and black holes in his best-selling book A Brief History Of Time His mostrenowned discovery is that black holes not gaining mass in another way can evaporate toessentially nothing This phenomenon better known as Hawking radiation turned him nearlyinstantly into one of the most famous physicists of our time

Prof Hawking was diagnosed in 1964 with which was then identified as the fatal degenerativemotor neurone disease ALS short for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis He was then 22 and wasgiven a few more years to live Soon afterwards rather than succumbing to depression hebegan to set his sights on some of the most fundamental questions concerning the physicalnature of the universe In due course he would achieve extraordinary successes despite hissevere physical disability Against traditional medical wisdom he managed to live another 55years The image of Stephen Hawking in his motorised wheelchair with head contorted slightlyto one side and hands crossed over to manage the controls caught the public imagination as atrue symbol of the triumph of mind over matter a very pointed citation by Roger Penrosewith whom he was jointly awarded the Eddington Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in1975

He received numerous other prizes and awards the last being the Pride of Britain Award forhis contribution to science and British culture in 2016 After receiving the award from PrimeMinister Theresa May Hawking humorously requested that she not seek his help with Brexit

The funeral for Professor Hawking took place on the 31st March in the church of the Universityof Cambridge Great St Maryrsquos His ashes will be placed besides the other giants in scienceNewton Maxwell and Dirac in Westminster Abbey London

With my best regards

Jef Ongena BPS President


BΦ NEWS

BPS General Scientific Meeting 2018

It is our pleasure to announce the General Scientific Meeting 2018 of the Belgian PhysicalSociety which will take place on Wednesday 11th April 2018 at Antwerp UniversityThis annual one-day conference brings together physicists from Belgian universitiesBelgian high schools and higher education schools as well as from Belgian industriesand companies Its main aim is to establish links and stimulate collaborations betweenresearch groups working at different research institutions within Belgium and to provide aplatform for Belgian high school teachers to get updated on the current state of the art in physics

Programme

bull 800 Registration and Welcome coffee with croissants

bull 900 Invited Plenary Lectures

ndash 900-915 Welcome by Jef Ongena BPS president

ndash 915-1000 Paulo Giubellino (Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research in Europe ampGSI) FAIR - The Universe in the Laboratory

ndash 1000-1045 Lieven Vandersypen (QUTech amp Kavli Inst for Nanoscience TUDelft) ASpins-inside Quantum Processor

bull 1045-1115 Coffee break

bull 1115-1240 Young Speakers Contest

ndash 1115-1125 Introduction amp European Physical Journal (sponsor)

ndash 1125-1150 Boris Brun-Barriegravere (UCL) - Wigner and Kondo physics in quantum pointcontacts revealed by scanning gate microscopy

ndash 1150-1215 Jonas Bekaert (UAntwerpen) - Monolayer materials as an ideal platform forenhanced superconductivity

ndash 1215-1240 Gwenhaeumll de Wasseige (VUB) - Solar Flare Neutrinos in the Multi MessengerEra

bull 1240-1400 Buffet walking lunch amp poster viewing

bull 1400-1630 Parallel sessions

ndash Astrophysics Geophysics and Plasma Physics (Auditorium O01)

ndash Biophysics statistical physics and medical physics (Auditorium O02)

ndash Condensed Matter and Nanophysics (Auditorium O03)

ndash Fundamental interactions Particle and Nuclear physics (Auditorium O04)


BΦ NEWS

bull ndash Quantum physics atoms and optics (Building Q - Aula Fernand Nedee)

ndash Physics and Education (Building Q - Promotiezaal)

bull 1630-1715 Poster session

bull 1715-1730 Closing session and prize ceremony

bull 1730-1830 Reception and sandwich dinner

bull 1830-2000 Evening event Movie De Kwantumrevolutie (Promotiezaal building Q)

The conference will take place on the Campus Drie Eiken of Antwerpen University Thevenue is Aula Fernand Nedee also known as building Q There are many parkingsscattered around the campus More details on how to reach the conference site is herehttpswwwuantwerpenbeenconferencesbelgian-physical-society-2018

BPS Best Master Thesis Awards 2018

We are proud to announce the three laureates of the BPS 2018 Best Master Thesis Award (inalphabetical order)

bull Paul Coppin (VUB) - InIce Veto Studies for the Future IceCube-GEN2 Neutrino Observatory

bull Pablo Correa (VUB) - Comparison of Statistical Methods to Evaluate the IceCube DiscoveryPotential for Steady Point Sources

bull Sacha Schiffmann (ULB) - Relativistic semi-empirical-core-potential calculations in alkali-likesystems using Lagrange meshes

The winners will receive their prize during the closing session of the BPS General ScientificMeeting on April 11th in Antwerp


BΦ FEATURED ARTICLE

Research Activities in Astronomyand Astrophysics in Belgium

Y Fremata S Van Eckb C Aertsc M Baesd D Berghmansa C Bruyninxa

S Buitinke M Davidf P Defraignea V Dehanta J De Keyserg S De

Rijked A Fuzfah M Groenewegena T Hertogi E Javauxj A Jorissenb R

Keppensk K Kolenbergf K Lefeverg A Lemaitreh A Lobera E Neefsg

D Pourbaixb P Quineti G Rauwm C Ringevaln J Surdejo M Tytgatp RVan der Lindena P van Hoofa T Van Hoolsta

aROB httpwwwastroomabe bULB httpwwwastroulbacbecKULeuvenIvS httpfyskuleuvenbester dUGent httpwwwastrougentbe

eVUB httpwevubacbenlastronomy-and-astrophysicsfUAntwerpen httpastrouaacbe gBIRA-IASB httpwwwaeronomiebe

hUNamur wwwnaxysbe iKULeuvenITF httpsfyskuleuvenbegwcjULiege (UR GEOLOGY) httpwwwfacsculiegebecmsc 3172635enur-geology

kKULeuvenCmPAhttpwiskuleuvenbecpalUMons httpwebumonsacbesimastroindexgbshtml mULiege httpstarulgacbe

nUCL httpsuclouvainbeenresearch-institutesirmpcp3 oULiege (AEOS) httpwwwaeosulgacbepULB httpwwwulbacbesciencesphysth

12The last years have seen the construction of im-portant ground telescopes and instruments whileBelgian astronomers also continued to enforce theirparticipation in the preparation development and

1The Belgian National Committee for Pure and Ap-plied Physics (BNCPAP) is responsible for the con-tent of the present review article For any re-mark please contact the secretary of the BNCPAP(rogerweynantsskynetbe)

2This text is an update of the overviews of Belgianresearch in Astrophysics written by H Oejonghe in2005 (Physicalia Magazine 27 275-280 and by AJorissen in 2011 (Bo Belgian Physical Society Maga-zine 4 33-42) Based in part on a recent status reportrequested by BELSPO its length was substantiallyincreased with respect to our regular entries and itexceptionally has a multi-authorship

the exploitation of Space missions On the interna-tional level these achievements allowed the Belgianastronomical community to strengthen an excel-lent reputation Their implication in ambitious re-search projects allowed our scientists to becomemain actors to major breakthrough in various fieldsof astronomy Most of the projects that made thesecontributions possible have been funded by grantsfrom the regions from the Belgian Science PolicyOffice (BELSPO) as well as from the European Re-search Council (ERC3) Among these ERC2 grantsare the most prestigious research grants in Europe

3More information about the awarded projects is givenin the text To designate the type of grant we adoptedthe following acronyms StG = Starting Grant CoG= Consolidator Grant AdG = Advanced Grant



They fund researchers of any nationality and agewho wish to pursue frontier research and providea high-level science stature to the person the labo-ratory and the country to which it is given Evenmore encouraging is to note that a good part ofthese grants have been awarded to women It makesour country quite unique and marks the beginningof a new era for astronomy in Belgium

1 New ground-basedtelescopes

11 Belgian telescopes (ordered bydecreasing mirror size)

The International Liquid Mirror Telescope (ILMT4)has been proposed by an international consor-tium initiated by astrophysicists from the Insti-tut drsquoAstrophysique et de Geophysique (Liegravege Uni-versity ULiegravege) and comprising the followinginstitutions the Royal Observatory of Belgium(ROB) the Canadian Astronomical Institutes fromQuebec (Laval University) Montreal (Universityof Montreal) Toronto (University of Toronto andYork University) Vancouver (University of BritishColumbia) Victoria (University of Victoria) andthe Aryabatta Research Institute of ObservationalScience (ARIES) located in the state of Uttarak-hand (Northeast India) The ILMT is equippedwith a 4-m rotating mercury primary mirror Ithas been constructed by the Belgian AMOS com-pany and will be installed in 2018 on the Devasthalmountain (Uttararakhand Northern India) closeto the ARIES located in the town of Nainital TheILMT presently under construction has mainlybeen funded by the Communaute Franccedilaise de Bel-gique the Reacutegion Wallonne the Fonds National de laRecherche Scientifique and ULiegravege The project aimsat monitoring a narrow strip of the sky to studyphotometric and astrometric variability of celestialobjects as faint as magnitude i = 22 with a time res-olution larger than one day but over long periods oftime These observations will not only contribute tostudies of micro-lensing and of time delay measure-ments of multiply imaged quasars but also to thedetection and follow-up of supernovae of variablestars of proper motions and trigonometric paral-

4httpwwwaeosulgacbeLMT

laxes of faint nearby objects In addition the ILMTwill provide a huge amount of quasar light curvesthat will allow astronomers to statistically investi-gate the nature of the intrinsic variability of quasarswith the aim to get information on the central en-gines These projects should provide ideal targetsof opportunities for follow-up direct imaging orspectroscopic observations with the ARIES 36mtelescope as described below The ILMT is open toall Belgian astronomers in the spirit of collaborativeprojects

The 12m Flemish Mercator telescope5 located atthe Roque de los Muchachos observatory (La PalmaCanary Islands) and run by KULeuvenIvS alreadymentioned in the 2005 and 2011 reports has contin-ued its operations It is equipped with the highlyefficient HERMES (high-resolution fibre-fed spec-trograph) spectrograph (Raskin et al 2011 AampA526 A69) The design building and integration ofthis luminous high-resolution spectrograph werejoint efforts of the Belgian institutes at the univer-sities of Leuven and Brussels (ULB) together withthe Belgian Royal Observatory with smaller contri-butions from the Geneva Observatory (Switzerland)and Landessternwarte Tautenburg (Germany) Thefibre-fed spectrograph began regular science opera-tion in April 2009 and is designed to be optimisedboth in wavelength stability and in efficiency Itsamples the whole optical range from 380 to 900 nmin one shot with a spectral resolution of 85 000 forthe high-resolution science fibre The dedicated tai-lored pipeline uses cross-correlation routines withspectral templates to derive accurate radial veloc-ities The long-term (5 years) radial-velocity sta-bility measured from 35 IAU standard stars is50 ms A better accuracy may even be achievedby using the observing mode where a wavelength-calibration spectrum is recorded simultaneouslywith the science spectrum A large fraction ofthe HERMESMercator observing time (about 100nightsyear) is devoted to the radial-velocity moni-toring of pooled targets of different kinds mostlybinary stars lacking orbital elements and whoseformation channel is poorly understood (sdB starspost-AGB stars and planetary nebulae barium stars ) A second major theme is to assemble andexploit spectroscopic information for numerous as-teroseismic targets observed by the NASA Kepler

5httpwwwmercatoriaces



mission HERMES data have prompted a large num-ber of peer-reviewed publications including severalNature and Science papers on asteroseismology ofstars of a whole range of masses and evolution-ary stages as well as a Nature paper on the useof a thermometer and of a chronometer of stellarinternal nucleosynthesis of evolved low-mass starsHERMES is also used to probe the atmosphere ofevolved giant stars through a technique knownas tomography and developed at ULB More re-cently the KULeuven team constructed a 3-arm fastcamera MAIA6 (Mercator Advanced Imager for As-teroseismology) which is ideally suited to studythe pulsational characteristics of faint sub dwarf OBpulsators This new instrument is also offered tothe entire HERMES consortium

Liegravege University is a junior partner of the consor-tium (consisting of University of Hamburg Univer-sity of Guanajuato and University of Liege) thatoperates the 12 m TIGRE (Telescopio Internacionalde Guanajuato Robotico-Espectroscopicot7) facilityin La Luz (Mexico) This fully robotic telescopeis equipped with the refurbished HEROS (Heidel-berg Extended Range Optical Spectrograph) fiber-fed echelle spectrograph which covers the almostfull optical domain at a resolving power of 20 000The instrument is dedicated to spectroscopic stud-ies in stellar astrophysics Liegravege University mainlyuses its TIGRE time to monitor early-type starsof all spectral types (0 B Wolf-Rayet LBV )Furthermore ULiegravege is currently designing a near-infrared spectrograph to be installed on the secondcurrently vacant focus of the telescope

The 60 em robotic TRAPPIST8 (TRAnsiting Planetsand PlanetesImals Small Telescope) telescope is aproject driven by the Origins in Cosmology and As-trophysics group (OrCA) at the Department of As-trophysics Geophysics and Oceanography (AGO)of the ULiegravege in close collaboration with the Ob-servatory of Geneva (Switzerland) Mostly fundedby the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research9 (FRS-FNRS) and the University of Liegravege TRAPPIST is de-voted to the detection and characterization of plan-ets located outside our solar system (ie exoplanets)

6httpsfyskuleuvenbesterinstrumentsthe-maia-camera

7httpswwwgapheulgacbeHRTindex_ehtml8httptrappistulgacbe9httpwww1frs-fnrsbe

and to the study of comets and other small bodies inour solar system It is composed of two telescopesTRAPPIST -South operated since 2010 at the ESO10

(European Southern Observatory) - La Silla Obser-vatory11 in Chile and TRAPPIST-North installed in2016 at the Oukaimeden Observatory in MoroccoTRAPPIST has been highly successful in finding ex-oplanets resulting in several Nature papers led bythe team of M Gillon and resulting in large atten-tion in the media in 2017 Also worth mentioning isthe award of a ERC StG (SPECULOOS for Searchfor habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars2015-2019 PI is M Gillon) to the ULiegravege team as apositive spin-off project to build new instrumenta-tion with the aim to hunt for exoplanets around Mdwarfs Moreover in the same year another ERCStG (VORTEX) was offered to O Absil at ULiegravegefor coronagraphic studies of exoplanets

12 ESO telescopesFrom 2006 to March 2015 and thanks to the fi-nancing by Belspo of the 4th Auxiliary Telescopeof the VISA (VL TI Sub Array) Belgian astrophysi-cists made a successful use of about 130 nights ofguaranteed time (GTO) This has led to Belgianexpertise in the very specific and demanding fieldof interferometry which beyond the availability ofthe GTO is now fully exploited to request time onVLTI (Very Large Telescope Interferometer) and onother instruments Scientific results span a widerange of astronomical objects (pre-main sequencestars main-sequence stars with debris discs giantstars with extended envelopes post-mass transferbinaries with circumbinary discs massive binaries ) Using precision near infrared CHARA (Centerfor High Angular Resolution Astronomy) and VLTI interferometry ULiegravege astronomers have directlyresolved the innermost regions of the planetary sys-tem around a main sequence star for the first timeand revealed the presence of large quantities of hotcircumstellar dust within a few astronomical unitsof the bright star Vega Their observations suggestan inordinate replenishment rate which may berelated to a major ongoing dynamical event in theplanetary system Surface brightness asymmetrieson the surface of AGB (Asymptotic Giant Branch)and supergiant stars were measured by the ULB

10httpwwwesoorg11httpwwwesoorgscifacilitieslasilla



group In the same vein R Sculptoris is being scru-tinized with PIONIER (Precision Integrated OpticsNear-infrared Imaging ExpeRiment) This instru-ment is also used by the same group to computeastrometric orbits from interferometric data TheKULeuvenIvS team exploited VL TI in the topic ofcircumstellar and circumbinary disks of young andevolved stars leading to several ESO Press Releaseson this topic Moreover H Sana (KULeuvenIvS)is currently leading an ESO Large Programme tounravel the binarity and multiplicity of the mostmassive stars in the Universe relying heavily onVLTI This is one of several Large Programmes fromBelgian teams that were approved by the ESO Ob-serving Programme Committee Given the highpressure existing on the ESO telescope time thisremarkable achievement demonstrates the top qual-ity of astrophysical research in our country Thehighly competitive national FWO (Fonds Weten-schappelijk Onderzoek) Starting Grant (Odysseus II2016-2020) offered to Hugues Sana for his re-entryas new Professor in Astrophysics at KULeuvenIvSis a direct spin-off project of his international ca-reer and ESO Large Programme The UGent grouphas been leading an ESO Large Programme on theinternal dynamics of dwarf elliptical galaxies TheKULeuvenIvS has been heavily involved in theESO Large Programme on ground-based supportfor CoRoT running from 2007 to 2012 The ROB isactively involved in a public survey named VMC(VISTA Magellanic Cloud Survey) carried-out withthe VISTA telescope in the infrared and which isaimed to study the star formation history of theMagellanic Clouds IvSKULeuven ROB and ULBteams (plus international partners mostly from theUniversity of Vienna) are part of the ESO LargeProgramme entitled A joint venture in the red theHerschel+MIDI+VISIR view on mass loss from evolvedstars which started in 2011 and constitutes a follow-up of a similarly large programme carried out onESArsquos Herschel infrared satellite Finally severalBelgian teams (ULB ROB ULiegravege and KULeuven)are actively taking part or even leading workinggroups of the GES (Gaia-ESO Survey) a LargeProgramme running over several years to providespectroscopic ground-support to the currently on-going ESArsquos Gaia mission The programme aimsat providing radial velocities and abundances forabout 105 stars to address the issue of the chemico-dynamical evolution of our Galaxy Astronomers

from ULiegravege are also making the best use of GaiaDR1 (first Data Release) data to identify very com-pact multiply imaged quasars

The Atacama Large Millimetersubmillimeter Ar-ray (ALMA) is a major international astronomicalproject It consists of an array of 50 12m-antennaswith baselines up to 16 km and an additional com-pact array of 7m and 12m antennas Calls for pro-posals have been released since 2011 Notwithstand-ing the very high over-subscription rate Belgianproposals have been very successful during yearlyregular calls so far with numerous peer-reviewedpublications including some in Nature

The Belgian astronomical community will undoubt-edly continue to make intensive use of ALMA inthe coming years This situation reflects the im-portant effort made by the community to gain ex-pertise in sub-mm and radio astronomy a fieldwhich was almost absent in the Belgian astronom-ical landscape until a decade ago Many relatedobserving programmes with Belgian involvementled to state-of-the-art publications and to a betterknowledge of certain categories of stars As anexample the teams at KULeuven and ROB areprobing circumstellar matter around evolved starsusing radio observations One particular case is themonitoring program of Sakurairsquos object12 a famousstar that was discovered in 1996 ROB researchersare monitoring its evolution on a yearly basis usingthe ESO- VLT telescopes as well as ALMA to studythe molecules in the circumstellar disk with the aimof deriving the isotope composition of the ejectedmaterial This will enable a direct test of the theoryof i-process nucleosynthesis The UGent group hasrecently built up quite a strong expertise on H Istudies using the 21cm line and sub-mm contin-uum observations In particular it has been quitesuccessful in obtaining observing time on competi-tive radio observatories worldwide including the4 large radio interferometers (VLA ATCA GMRTWSRT) and the largest single-dish sub-mm and mmtelescopes Prime examples are the involvement ofUGent in the AGES (Arecibo Galaxy Environment

12A so-called born-again AGB star a central star of aplanetary nebula that underwent a very late heliumshell flash The evolution of this star is extremelyrapid and can be followed in real time which makesit a good test case for stellar evolution models



Survey) project13 a survey of galaxies in differentenvironments with the Arecibo 305m telescope thathas been granted 2000 hours of observing time andin the HALOGAS (Hydrogen Accretion in LOcalGAlaxieS) survey14 the deepest HI survey of nearbygalaxies that is consuming almost 3000 hours ofWSRT time

The participation in radio investigations of stellarobjects also developed at ULiegravege using VLA andGMRT (Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope) espe-cially in the context of the study of particle accel-erating colliding-wind binaries and other galacticnon-thermal radio sources In particular severalfields in the Cygnus region were observed at sev-eral frequencies with the GMRT On the other handcollaborations with radio astrophysicists from LaPlata (Argentina) and ASTRONJIVE (The Nether-lands) focus on the preparation of high angularresolution imaging campaigns using notably theEVN15 (European VLBI Network)

Last but not least in the ESO framework the Belgianastronomical community awaits the European Ex-tremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) planned for 2024Phase16 B (ie preliminary design) studies are on-going for the METIS (Mid-Infrared E-ELT Imagerand Spectrograph) instrument with strong involve-ments of KULeuvenIvS and ULiegravege (Sect 3)

13 OthersIn November 2009 BELSPO signed an agreementwith ARIES on the cooperation for the constructionof a 36m optical telescope at Devasthal ( DOTDevasthal Optical Telescope) The constructionwas performed by AMOS in Liege In return ofthis financial investment from Belspo Belgian as-tronomers will receive 7 of the telescopersquos observ-ing time during the five first years of its operationallife The first call for early science with the DOTwas launched in March 2017 There are three firstgeneration instruments an optical CCD imagera near-infrared imager TIRCAM-2 (10-micron in-frared camera which is already available) and a

13httpwwwnaicedusimages14httpwwwastronnlhalogas15httpwwwevlbiorg16For an instrument development Phase A denotes the

preliminary analysis phase B its definition phase Cits design and phase 0 its construction

spectrograph-cum-imager FOSC (Faint Object Spec-trograph Camera will be offered soon) These in-struments allow multi-color photometry (narrow-band and broadband filters) and low-resolutionspectroscopy (R lt 4000) A high-resolution spec-trograph and CCD fast photometer will only be of-fered as second-generation instruments The Belgo-Indian Network for Astronomy amp Astrophysics(BINA) is a network that unites Belgian and In-dian partner institutes with the optimization of thescientific exploitation of the Indo-Belgian telescopes(4-m ILMT and 36-m DOT) as ultimate goal Atthe Belgian side the network is funded by BEL-SPO and led by ROB The first BINA workshopwas hosted by the Aryabhatta Research Institute ofObservational Sciences (ARIES) in Nainital (India)on 2016 November 15-18 It attracted 107 partici-pants including 11 Belgian colleagues The RoyalBelgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB)deployed a network of radio receiving stations forthe detection of meteors called BRAMS17 (BelgianRAdio Meteor Stations) based on the principleof forward scattering of radio waves from meteorionization trails A dedicated beacon located inDourbes (Southern Belgium) acts as transmitter Al-most 30 receiving stations are currently deployedthroughout the country run by Belgian radio ama-teurs groups of amateur astronomers and publicobservatories In 2016 they started the citizen sci-ence project Radio Meteor Zoo in collaboration withZooniverse involving interested people in the anal-ysis of the data

Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber SpectroscopicTelescope (LAMOST) is a unique telescope locatedin the Xinglong Observatory (China) that combinesa large aperture (36-49 m) with a wide field ofview (circular with a diameter of 5 degrees) Thefocal surface is covered with 4000 optical fibers con-nected to 16 multi-object optical spectrometers with250 optical fibers each Hence this instrument isideal to obtain low-resolution (R=1800) spectra fora large number of objects simultaneously In 2010the LAMOST -Kepler project (PI Peter De Cat fromROB) was initiated with the aim to observe as manyobjects in the field of view of the Kepler space mis-sion as possible for a homogeneous determinationof stellar parameters (effective temperature surfacegravity metallicity radial velocity and an estima-

17httpbramsaeronomiebe



tion of the projected rotational velocity for fast rotat-ing objects) The observations started in May 2011and in the first 4 years about 200000 objects wereobserved

The Low Frequency Array ( LOFAR) is a large radiotelescope in the Netherlands operating in the 10-250MHz frequency range It consists of thousands ofomni-directional antennas and allows for multipleobservation strategies The VUB uses LOFAR tomeasure short radio bursts emitted by atmosphericair showers from high-energy cosmic rays Thegroup is funded through a highly competitive ERCStG (LOFAR Searching for the Origin of CosmicRays and Neutrinos with LOFAR 2015-2020 PIis Stijn Buitink) In 2016 the first LOFAR resultson the mass composition of cosmic rays aroundthe galactic extragalactic transition were publishedin Nature Further research is aimed at improve-ment of the precision and energy range of thesemeasurements as well as the implementation of anew observational mode for LOFAR that allows thesearch for neutrino impacts on the lunar surface

2 Space missions

21 Belgian missions

The Belgian companies Verhaert Spacebel and theresearch centre Centre Spatial de Liege (CSL) builtthe Belgian-led Proba (PRoject for OnBoard Au-tonomy satellites The Proba satellites are amongthe smallest flown by ESA yet they have a bigimpact in space technology They are also partof ESArsquos In orbit Technology Demonstration Pro-gramme missions dedicated to the demonstrationof innovative technologies Several new technolog-ical developments and scientific experiments arebeing flown on Proba satellites Among these aretwo solar-observation experiments led by Belgianteams (from the ROB CSL BIRA-IASB and the Cen-tre for Plasma Astrophysics from KULeuven) theLy-alpha radiometer (LYRA) and the Sun Watcherusing APS detectors and image Processing (SWAP)using new pixel sensor technology taking measure-ments of the solar corona in a very narrow band

Also ALTIUS (Atmospheric Limb Tracker for In-vestigation of the Upcoming Stratosphere) is partof the Proba family ALTIUS is a satellite mission

proposed by BIRA-IASB aiming at the remote sens-ing of key atmospheric constituents at high verticalresolution The ALTIUS mission concept has beenstudied since 2006 by BIRA-IASB together withthe OIP Sensor Systems and Qinetiq Space Belgiumcompanies After several ESA-organized reviews in2015 BELSPO officially announced in early 2016 itssupport for the mission end-to-end Furthermorethe ESA Earth Observation Programme Board hasofficially accepted ALTIUS as an element of theEarthWatch programme The road is wide openfor the development of the instrument space plat-form ground segment algorithms and launch inthe nearby future

22 CNES - NASA - ESAastrophysics missions withBelgian involvement

ROB and the Royal Meteorological Institute (RMI)are involved at co-PI level in the CNES-Ied PI-CARD mission for the SOVAP (SOlar VAriabilityPICARD) instrument a bolometer whose sensingelement is based on micro-temperature differentialthermometers placed on a thermal shunt BIRA-IASB also hosts its Science Operation Centre atthe Belgian User Support and Operation Centre(BUSOC) premises

As apparent from the above various Belgian teamshave acquired internationally recognised expertisein the fields of solar and solar-terrestrial physicsand work often in close collaboration on jointprojects On its own each group is relatively smalland faces various scale problems including lackof stability of technical personnel and instrumentscientists over time-scales exceeding that of singleprojects (gt 3 years) To remedy this situation theSolar and Terrestrial Centre of Excellence (STCE)has been created at the Space Pole18 in Brussels

Belgian scientists (KULeuvenIvS ULiegravege ROB)were heavily involved in the CNES-dominated(CoRoT mission (COnvection ROtation and plane-tary Transits 2006 - 2012) both at instrument leveland for the scientific exploitation of the data Thisexpertise led to major involvement in the NASAmissions Kepler and its refurbished version K2 aswell as in the TESS mission (Transiting Exoplanet

18httpwwwomabeindexphpen



Survey Satellite) to be launched in 2018 The adventof the CoRoT and Kepler space missions has consid-erably increased the potential of asteroseismologyespecially for upper-main-sequence stars and redgiant stars Of particular interest are the slowlypulsating B-type stars which oscillate in gravitymodes penetrating deeply into the star In thoseit is possible to assess the extent of the convectivecore from the average spacing of gravity modes andto show from the small deviations from equidis-tant spacing that the composition gradient abovethe core is different from what instantaneous mix-ing would require Asteroseismology of red giantsemerged when scientists from KULeuvenIvS de-tected solar-like oscillations in a red giant whichresulted in a Nature paper Here again the long andprecise data strings of satellites such as CoRoT en-abled the detection of many non-radial modes withfairly long lifetimes Confronting such modes withstellar-structure models for several hundred red gi-ants made it possible to clearly distinguish betweenhydrogen-burning (first) red giant stars and helium-burning (clump) stars and to measure the mass oftheir helium core Moreover KULeuvenIvS leda Nature paper on the first derivation of the corerotation from mixed dipole modes from 2 years ofuninterrupted Kepler data This discovery boostedextensive observational and theoretical studies onthe interior rotation of evolved stars because it wasfound that current evolutionary models are two or-ders of magnitude wrong in their prediction of thecore rotation Much stronger coupling between coreand envelope must occur than currently predicted

The heritage of the Belgian CoRoT and Kepler in-volvement led to a leading role of Belgian scien-tists in the ESA M319 mission PLATO (PLAnetaryTransits and Oscillations of stars) selected in 2014within ESArsquos Cosmic Vision Programme and cur-rently in its implementation phase KULeuvenIvSand CSL lead the calibration and testing of thecameras of this mission consisting of 26 identi-cal telescopes operating from one platform to belaunched to L2 KULeuvenIvS and Uliege areheavily involved in the scientific exploitation of themission both for the core programme and for thePLATO Complementary Programme the latter ledby KULeuven PLATO will be launched in 2026

19Third medium class mission of ESArsquos Cosmic Visionprogramme (2015 - 2025)

The ESA infrared and submillimetre Herschel satel-lite launched in May 2009 was one of the mostsuccessful achievement from ESA astronomy pro-gramme It hosted the largest mirror (35m) everflown Belgium has been involved at the co-PI level(led by the KULeuvenIvS with industrial contribu-tions from CSL IMEC and OIP) in the design andconstruction of the Photo detector Array Cameraand Spectrometer (PACS) one of Herschelrsquos threescience instruments exploring the wavelength range60 - 210 microm over a field of view of sim 175rsquo x 35rsquoKULeuvenIvS has opened its right of participationin the guaranteed-time programmes of Herschel toall interested Belgian partners The scientific issuesthat were addressed are in the fields of star forma-tion mass loss of evolved stars extreme massivestars with winds nearby galaxies high-redshiftgalaxies and cosmology In this framework aBRAINbe project (STARLAB) was obtained in 2016by ULB KULeuven and ROB providing a strongincentive to collaboration on evolved stars and theirenvironments studied with Herschel ALMA andHERMES Three PhD theses in co-direction betweenpairs of the participating Belgian institutes are tak-ing place in that context These efforts have led to animpressive number of papers (co- )authored by Bel-gian astronomers from various institutes Amongthem eg a Nature paper on the discovery of wa-ter around carbon stars and a Science paper onthe discovery of high-redshift gravitational lensesat submm wavelengths This instrument activityled to the involvement of KULeuvenIvS at co-PIlevel in the Mid Infrared Instrument (MIRI) con-sortium of the future James Webb Space Telescope(with contributions from CSL and UGent) to belaunched in 2018 The Herschel heritage also im-plied involvement of KULeuvenIvS in the missioncandidate ARIEL (Atmospheric Remote-sensing In-frared Exoplanet Large-survey) currently undergo-ing a design study and in competition with twoother mission candidates for the M4 slot in ESArsquosCosmic Vision programme (2015-2025) In additionboth KULeuvenIvS and UGent are involved inthe European SAFARI instrument planned for theESAJapanese infrared satellite SPICA (Space In-frared Telescope for Cosmology and Astrophysics)currently proposed as a candidate M5 mission

Belgian scientists playa considerable role in many ofthe data-processing coordination units for the ESAGaia satellite (launched in December 2013) with



ULB ULiegravege KULeuvenIvS UAntwerpen andROB as partners (sometimes leaders) in the topicsof variable stars binaries radial velocity determi-nation and characterisation of stars solar-systembodies quasars and gravitational lenses The firstGaia data release (DR1) took place in September2016 focused on the astrometry of single star-likeobjects ULB ROB ULiegravege and UAntwerp are cur-rently active in the preparation of the second datarelease scheduled for April 2018 as it should con-tain the radial velocities of 5 to 8 millions of singlestars as well as astrometric binaries and solar sys-tem objects domains in which those Belgian teamshold some leading positions KULeuvenIvS madethe first comparison of asteroseismic versus astro-metric distances of nearby dwarfs and distant redgiants within CU7 pointing out excellent agree-ment and large future potential to rely on seismicdistances for red giants too far away for Gaia dis-tances to become available Another scientific issuecurrently addressed with the DR1 Gaia data is egthe Hertzsprung-Russell diagrams of several cate-gories of misunderstood late-type stars (ULB andKULeuven)

Ever since its launch in 1999ULiegravege astrophysicistshave been using ESArsquos X-ray observatory XMM-Newton (X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission) to study theX-ray emission of massive stars of all spectral typesThese studies provided unprecedented insight intothe physics and hydrodynamics of stellar windsand have deeply changed our understanding ofthe wind interactions in massive binaries For thefirst time XMM-Newton data unveiled the vari-ability of the X-ray emission of single massivestars resulting from magnetically-confined stellarwinds large-scale co-rotating wind structures orphotospheric pulsations propagating into the stel-lar wind Owing to its high sensitivity and widefield of view XMM-Newton allowed to study theX-ray emission of large populations of massive starsand low-mass pre-main sequence stars in variousopen stellar clusters ULiegravege researchers also utilizethe XMM-Newton satellite to study the cosmologi-cal Large Scale Structures through various interna-tional consortia (XMM-Medium Deep Survey XMMLarge Scale Structure Survey and the XXL project)ULiegravege is in charge of the exploitation of the quasaraspect of the project Detection of large numbers ofquasars in contiguous fields and in a homogeneousmanner will enable the investigation of their 2D

and 3D spatial distribution

The Advanced Telescope for High ENergy Astrophysics(ATHENA) is ESArsquos future X-ray telescope underdevelopment for launch around 2028 It is the sec-ond large class mission in Cosmic Vision ATHENAwill be two orders of magnitude more sensitive thanChandra and XMM-Newton The primary goals ofthe mission are to map hot gas structures deter-mining their physical properties and searching forsupermassive black holes In addition the missionwill perform observations of all kinds of cosmicX-ray sources The ULiegravege team is deeply involvedin the scientific preparation of this mission notablyleading the Science Working Group 32 on Star For-mation and Evolution Moreover ULiegravege and CSLcontribute to the preparation of the X-IFU (X-rayIntegral Field Unit) instrument that will provideunprecedented high-resolution X-ray spectroscopyof many kinds of cosmic X-ray sources The UGentgroup is also involved in the scientific preparationof the mission

Since 2015 the Institute for Theoretical Physics atKULeuven has developed gravitational wave sci-ence as a novel research direction It has launcheda Centre for Gravitational Waves that acts as a plat-form to strengthen and to coordinate nationwidecollaboration on gravitational wave science It hasalso taken up a role in the gravitational wave ESAmission LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna)which was selected for L3 the third and final largeclass mission in Cosmic Vision earlier in 2017 LISAbuilds on the highly successful technology mis-sion LISA Pathfinder (in which Belgium was notinvolved) An initial phase-0 study was recentlycompleted and phase-A is scheduled to start inApril 2018 LISArsquos launch is planned for 2034 TheBelgian co-PI for LISA is T Hertog who is heavilyinvolved in the fundamental physics science goalsof the mission The Belgian contribution to LISAinvolves also an instrumental component whichis being pursued in a Belgian (KULeuvenIvS) -Dutch collaboration

In order to study the dynamics of the external layersof the solar atmosphere the ROB participates as co-investigator or associated investigator in space mis-



sions such as SOHO20EIT21 SOHOLASCO22STEREO23SECCHI24 Together with ULiegravegeCSLROB will playa leading role in the EUI instrument(Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging) onboard the M1 So-lar Orbiter mission to be launched in 2019 Theseactivities complement those already described inrelation with the Proba-2 satellite (Sect 21)

Euclid is the M2 opticalinfrared space telescope tobe launched in 2020 towards L2 (Lagrange point)from where it will map the 3D distribution of abouttwo billion galaxies The subsequent analysis ofthe data will reveal the details of the matter dis-tribution throughout the Universe including thecontribution of the dark matter Moreover it willbe possible to trace the accelerating expansion ofthe Universe and to study the behaviour of theenigmatic dark energy that causes the accelerationUGent astronomers are deeply involved in Euclidboth in its development and its scientific exploita-tion The group is especially interested in studyingthe sim 105 dwarf galaxies that will be detected

23 Solar-system explorationmissions

Belgium is involved in several ESA missions toterrestrial planets such as Mars Express and theExoMars missions BIRA-IASB is PI and ROB co-I of NOMAD (Nadir and Occultation for MArsDiscovery) a 3-channel spectrometer hosting 2 in-frared channels and one UVvisible channel on theExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter launched in 2016 Theinfrared channels build upon the expertise of BIRA-IASB with its successful SOIR (Solar Occultationin the Infra-Red) instrument which was onboardESArsquos Venus Express mission ROB was co-I of theradio science experiment of Mars Express and of theAMELIA (Atmospheric Mars Entry and LandingInvestigation and Analysis) instrument hosted bythe Entry Descent and Landing Demonstrator Moduleon ExoMars ROB is also PI of LaRa (Lander Ra-dio science) the radio science experiment of theExoMars 2020 mission which has the objective to

20Solar and Heliospheric Observatory21Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope22Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph23Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory24Sun Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric In-

vestigation

observe the rotation and orientation of Mars andtherewith to determine properties of Mars deepinterior Sill on the same mission ULiegravege (UR GE-OLOGY) is co-PI of the instrument named CLUPI(Close-UP Imager) and collaborator for RLS (Ra-man Laser Spectrometer) which will help to imageidentify and characterize minerals

Belgium strongly participates in the ESA corner-stone mission BepiColombo to Mercury ROB to-gether with UNamur are Co-I of three of its instru-ments the Mercury Orbiter Radio science Experi-ment (MORE) the BepiColombo Laser Altimeter(BELA) and the high resolution camera (SIMBIO-SYS) Issues addressed by these instruments are therotation and interior structure and evolution of Mer-cury which will be confronted to models developedat ROB and UNamur

ROB leads the ESA Working Group on the interiorof satellites of the JUICE (JUpiter ICy moons Ex-plorer) mission to Jupiter and its satellites and isco-I of five instruments the radioscience experi-ment 3GM (in which also UNamur is co-I) the laseraltimeter (GALA GAnymede Laser Altimeter) theJUICE magnetometer (J-MAG) the VIS-NIR imagingspectrometer (MAJIS) and the Radio Interferometryand Doppler Experiment (PRIDE)

BIRA-IASB was Co-I in the ROSINA (Rosetta Or-biter Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis)mass spectrometry consortium on the Rosetta mis-sion which studied the physics and chemistry ofthe coma of comet 67PChuryumov-GerasimenkoBy now ROSINA has discovered a zoo of moleculesof which a lot have never been detected in cometsbefore This has led to a large number of high-visibility publications

ROB is co-I of the InSight (Interior explorationusing Seismic Investigations Geodesy and HeatTransport) mission to Mars and participating scien-tist in the Cassini mission to Saturn and its moonsand the MAVEN (MArs Atmosphere and VolatileEvolutioN) mission to Mars ROB exploits radioscience data from many NASA missions like MarsGlobal Surveyor Mars Odyssey Mars ReconnaissanceOrbiter and Cassini to Saturn and its moons



3 Instrument design andbuilding

KULeuvenIvS so far took the lead in the construc-tion of the HERMES and MAlA instruments forthe Mercator telescope A direct spin-off of theMAlA camera design is KULeuvenrsquos involvement inthe BlackGEM instrument a 3-telescope instrumentto find optical counterparts of gravitational wavesBlackGEM is led by the Radboud University NijmegenKULeuven designs and builds the cooling systemfor the cameras of the instrument which will beinstalled at the La Silla Observatory site of ESO end2018 Although Belgian teams never were able totake the leadership of the design and constructionof a large international astronomical instrumentdue to too limited national funds many are directlyinvolved as partners as already discussed aboveCurrent involvements in instrument developmentconcernKULeuven and UGent for the MIRIJWST instru-ment (currently in development Phase D) KULeu-ven and ULiegravege for METIS (currently in Phase B)the Mid-infrared ELT Imager and Spectrograph forthe ESO Extremely Large Telescope KULeuven andCSL for the instrument calibration of PLATO (PhaseC) and for the instrument design of ARIEL (PhaseA)

Thanks to its expertise in high-energy astrophysicsthe High-Energy Astrophysics Group from ULiegravegetogether with CSL have become partners of the in-ternational instrument consortium (led by CNES)that will build the X-ray Integral Field Unit (X-IFU)microcalorimeter spectrograph for ESArsquos next gen-eration X-ray observatory ATHENA as already in-dicated above X-IFU is an ambitious cryogenicinstrument that will provide unprecedented viewsof the hot and energetic Universe

The expertise gained in space-instrumentation bythe different groups also lays the foundation for apossible Belgian contribution to the next generationof ground-based gravitational wave observatoriesInitial studies are underway to assess the feasibilityand potential to construct a third generation grav-itational wave observatory in the Dutch - German- Belgian border area the Einstein Telescope Thiswould constitute an exceptional opportunity forBelgium not only from a scientific viewpoint but

also from a broader socio-economic and educationalperspective A strong Belgian involvement in thisproject would benefit from a collaboration betweenthe different space-instrumentation groups and theexperimental high-energy physics community

BIRA-IASB remains with its Engineering Divisiona strong actor in the design and construction ofspace science instruments In-house prototypingis combined with outsourcing of the final produc-tion to industry The division is especially skilledin the design of logic systems carrying on-boardintelligence based on microcontrollers microproces-sors or Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA)Associated firmware (VHDL) and software is de-veloped for these platforms The mechanical work-shop is specialized in the design and manufactur-ing of structural mechanics for space The divisionhas a number of facilities at its disposal for func-tional testing and thermal-vacuum testing In recentyears the division has successfully contributed tothe operation of ROSINA-DFMS (ROSINArsquos DoubleFocusing Mass Spectrometer) on Rosetta SPICAM(Spectroscopy for Investigation of Characteristicsof the Atmosphere of Mars) on Mars Express andSPICAVSOIR (Solar Occultation at Infrared) onVenus Express to the construction and operation ofNOMAD on the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and ofthe Energetic Particle Telescope on Proba-V (whereV stands for vegetation) and to the design of theTHOR (Turbulence Heating ObserveR) Cold SolarWind instrument

4 Synergies and resourcepooling

The large effort needed in the preparation and ex-ploitation of large missions or of complex ground-based instruments often call for the creation of largeconsortia Belgian teams are indeed involved inmany such consortia We list those of the pastdecade here

Within the discipline of asteroseismology the in-stitutes involved in this kind of research in Bel-gium (KULeuven ROB Uliege) have integratedtheir research within the Belgian AsteroseismologyGroup (BAG) since 2000 in the framework of pre-vious Interuniversity Attraction Poles Since 2006Belgian asteroseismologists have opened up their



ambition and have been integrated into European-funded networks rather than the BAG The first Eu-ropean funded network within FP6 (6th FrameworkProgramme) concentrated on Helio- and Asteroseis-mology was HELAS (European HELio- and AStero-seismology network) and ran from 2006-2010 Sub-sequently after positive evaluations KULeuvenIvSand Uliege were involved in the FP7 SpaceInnproject (Exploitation of Space Data for InnovativeHelio- and Asteroseismology 2012-2016) and cur-rently KULeuvenIvS is one of the partners in theH2020 Integration Action HELAS-IA currently inStage 2 of the competition after selection in Stage 1by the European Commission (success rate in Stage2 is 13)KULeuven ROB and ULB have jointly constructedthe HERMES spectrograph ( for the Mercator tele-scope and have agreed on a Memorandum of Un-derstanding for its exploitation which involvesmore than 100 nights per year of pooled observa-tions The largest programme on HERMES con-cerns the atmospheric study and radial-velocitymonitoring of a large and diverse sample of binarieswith late-type components This programme andmost of the other projects that ran or are request-ing data from the instrument are collaborationsbetween the member institutes of the HERMES con-sortium

Various international consortia (XMM-MediumDeep Survey XMM Large Scale Structure Surveyand the XXL project) were mentioned in relationwith the ULiegravege activities in XMM-Newton LiegravegeUniversity was also involved in the internationalChandra Cygnus OB2 Legacy Survey (study of theX-ray emission of massive stars in Cyg OB2) and alarge multi-wavelength campaign to study the near-est massive eclipsing binary δ Ori notably withfour deep Chandra exposures

The European Leadership in Space Astrometry(ELSA) was a Marie Curie Research Training Net-work supported by the European CommunityrsquosSixth Framework Programme (FP6) which startedin October 2006 lasted for 4 years and involvedULB The overall objectives of ELSA were to de-velop the theoretical understanding and practicalanalysis tools of importance for the European SpaceAgencyrsquos astrometric mission Gaia and to foster thedevelopment of a new generation of researchersin the area of space astrometry ELSA has been

followed by the FP7 Gaia Research for European As-tronomy Training (GREAT) network sponsored bythe European Science Foundation (ESF) and involv-ing KULeuvenIvS ULB ROB and ULiegravege

Within the Belgian Solar-Terrestrial Centre of Excel-lence (STCE) the SIDC (Solar Influences Data anal-ysis Center) is a Regional Warning Centre of theInternational Space Environment Service (ISES) pro-viding space weather alerts in real time or on adaily weekly or monthly schedule It is a partnerin the space weather segment of the ESA SpaceSituational Awareness Program

ULiegravege chaired the European Interferome-try Initiative consortium under FP6 and FP7(httpwwweuropean-interferometryeu) aim-ing at the organization of optical and infraredinterferometry projects in Europe

Finally the study of high energy events in theuniverse as supernova active galactic nuclei andgamma ray bursts make use of a multi-messengerapproach combining astronomical measurementsand the detection of high energy cosmic rays pho-tons and neutrinos These multidisciplinary activi-ties are described in the Research activities in fun-damental interactions from particles to cosmologyin Belgium

5 Theoretical astrophysicsresearch in Belgium

Nuclear astrophysics is a traditional niche of ULBtheoretical research with the computation and com-pilation of nuclear data of astrophysical interest2526including the equation of state of dense matter inextreme astrophysical environments such as neu-tron stars The group has a strong expertise in thes- r- and p- processes of nucleosynthesis studiedthrough parametric approaches or through uni- ormulti- dimensional stellar evolution models The-oretical research at ULB involves as well stellarevolution covering all evolutionary stages27 frompre-main sequence to neon combustion for a vastmass range with new developments regarding the

25httpwwwastroulbacbebruslib26httpwwwastroulbacbeNetgenformhtml27httpwwwastroulbacbe-siessSiteSTAREVOL



binary evolution (BINSTAR code) and rotationally-induced mixing using hydrodynamical tools whenneeded and treating the associated nucleosynthe-sis The developments about BINSTAR are done incollaboration with VUB which has a long-standingresearch history in this field 3D hydrodynamicalmodels of supergiant atmospheres are also com-puted and confrontations are performed with abun-dances derived from observations Moreover ULBis involved in the modelling of neutron stars theirinternal constitution and their hydrodynamics espe-cially superfluidity ULB is a partner of the COSTaction MP130428 NewCompStar Exploring funda-mental physics with compact stars

A strong theoretical expertise exists in Belgium(ULiegravege KULeuvenIvS) regarding theoretical com-putations of the nonradial oscillation spectra of var-ious kinds of stars in the context of asteroseismol-ogy In particular thanks to the highly competitiveERC Advanced Grant team led by KULeuvenIvS(MAMSIE Mixing and Angular Momentum tranS-port of massIvE stars 2016-2020 PI is CAerts)asteroseismology is now getting bridged with 3-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations to buildnew theoretical stellar evolution models of massivestars calibrated by gravity-mode oscillations

The Centre for mathematical Plasma-Astrophysicsat KULeuven (KULeuvenCmPA) focuses on the-oretical and computational plasma physics rele-vant for solar physics astrophysics and labora-tory (fusion) plasmas Key applications includemagneto-seismology in the solar corona all as-pects of space weather relativistic plasma dynam-ics and fundamental plasma physics researchKULeuvenCmP A coordinates several ongoingEC-FP7 and H2020 projects targeting space weatherapplications namely Soteria29 (SOlar TERrestrialInvestigations and Archives) and SWIFF30(SpaceWeather Integrated Forecasting Framework) as wellas SOLSPANET (Solar and Space Weather Networkof Excellence) It is involved in European Researchand Training Networks (specifically SOLAIRE31 Thegroup does a lot of numerical work targeted tohigh performance computing since the prime work

28httpwwwcosteuCOST_ActionsmpnsMP130429httpsoteria-spaceeu30httpwwwswiffeu31httpwwwiacessolaire

package of the new Intel Exascience Lab32 is on spaceweather modelling with KULeuvenCmPA actingas coordinator where 5 Flemish universities IMECand Intel collaborate in work packages Relativis-tic gas and plasma modelling for Active Galac-tic Nuclei jets and in the extreme conditions ofGamma Ray Bursts is done in close collaborationwith Utrecht and Amsterdam colleagues as part ofthe COST action MP0905 The CmPA was recentlyawarded an ERC Consolidator grant (BOSS-WAVES2018-2022 PI is T Van Doorsselaere) for the studyof backreaction of the solar plasma to waves

The Atomic Physics and Astrophysics Group of MonsUniversity has a long-standing tradition in the de-termination of fundamental parameters such asradiative and collisional rates for atoms and ions ofastrophysical interest particularly for the investiga-tion of the chemical composition of stars (includingthe Sun and the chemically-peculiar stars) and theanalysis of stellar nucleosynthesis For that pur-pose elaborated theoretical approaches and up-to-date experimental techniques (time-resolved laser-induced fluorescence spectroscopy Fourier trans-form spectroscopy ) are currently used In addi-tion several unique databases storing atomic datafor heavy elements (5th 6th rows of the periodictable lanthanides actinides) have been developedcontaining position and intensity parameters for alarge number (over 100 000) of transitions belongingto ions of astrophysical interest (DREAM (Databaseon Rare-Earths at Mons)33 and DESIRE (DatabasEon Sixth Row Elements)34 ) and of interest for laserdevices and for fusion research (ADAS AtomicData and Analysis Structure collaboration) A newproject is currently also dedicated to the study ofplasma environment on the atomic structure andprocesses involving K-vacancy states for differentionic systems in the context of high-density astro-physical media such as accretion disks around blackholes

KULeuven (IvS Department of Chemistry Depart-ment of Mathematics) has been granted an Inter-disciplinary Research Project (IDO) to develop a

32httpwwwexasciencecom33httphostingumonsacbehtmlagifdatabases

dreamhtmI34httphostingumonsacbehtmlagifdatabases

desirehtml



multidimensional theoretical code for exoplanet at-mospheres including radiative transfer chemistrydynamics cloud formation etc Expertise on thesimilar topic of non-LTE radiative transfer in dustycircumstellar shells around evolved stars is alreadyexisting in the KULeuvenlIvS team thanks to thecode GASTRoNOoM coupled to a dust radiativetransfer code (MCMAX) This KULeuvenlIvS teamrecently got a large boost thanks to the award of anERC Consolidator grant (AEROSOL 2016-2020 PIis LDecin)

The ROB has been granted a BRAINbe Network-ing Project for the development of the BelgianRepository of Atomic data and Stellar Spectra bythe Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (BRASS2014-2018 PI is ALobel) The Project is a scien-tific collaboration on astrophysics research of theROB KULeuven European Southern Observatoryat Paranal (Chile) and ULB The follow-up commit-tee also involves the University of Antwerp andthe Vereniging voor Sterrenkunde in the projectBRASS (Belgian Repository of fundamental AtomicData and Stellar Spectra) also involves a PhD pro-gram to be completed at the KULeuven BRASStakes a first but crucial step towards removingall systematic errors in atomic input data requiredfor quantitative stellar spectroscopy It will thor-oughly assess the quality of fundamental atomicdata available in the largest repositories by com-paring very high-quality observed stellar spectrawith state-of-the-art theoretical spectra Whereasthis type of study has currently been carried outfor very few stars at the time and mostly limited tocomparable spectral types assembled from varioussources BRASS will combine analyze and offerthe community the first uniform large collection ofbenchmark and reference stars3536This study willbe more complete than any other to date in termsof coverage of the stellar parameter space as wellas the spectral wavelength coverage

NaXys (Namur Centre on Complex Systems) at UN-amur has recently applied its long-standing exper-tise in celestial mechanics and Hamiltonian theoryto exoplanets (high mutual inclinations Kozai reso-nance and migration) or to artificial satellites andspace-debris dynamics (in particular the search for

35httpbrasssdforg36

stability zones - candidates for parking orbits orzones of accumulation of debris - and the analysisof the solar radiation pressure for specific debrisNaXys has developed a full expertise in theoret-ical cosmology as well focusing on dark energysimulations of cosmic structure formation with nu-merical relativity techniques alternative theories ofgravitation and the derivation of multi-scale com-bined constraints (solar-system Hubble diagramcompact objects CMB37 and large-scale structurephysics) The NaXys group is member of the EuclidConsortium The group is involved into tests ofgeneral relativity and inflationary scenarios withEuclid which requires careful modeling of observ-ables The cosmology group in NaXys has recentlyopened a new line of research in electromagneticdetectors of gravitational waves which are comple-mentary to current laser interferometers since theywill allow probing higher frequency ranges (kHz toTHz and higher)

The UGent astronomy group focuses on thekinematics and dynamics of galaxies includingtheir formation evolution and structureespeciallyfor dwarf galaxies through state-of-the-art N-bodySPH simulations This research is backed byobservational collaborations and will have strongties with the data coming from the future ESA Eu-clid mission A second major theoretical topic isthe study of the interaction of matter and radia-tion through radiative transfer 3D non-LTE simu-lations These radiative transfer techniques haveled to the development of a radiative transfer codethat is mainly used to model the dusty interstellarmedium in galaxies in particular to analyze far-infrared observations of nearby galaxies such asthose obtained by Herschel (Sect 22) Finally thetopic of galaxy dynamics has also developed intothe investigation of dark matter halos and modifiedgravity the UGent group is using mainly radioobservations to determine the mass distribution ingalaxies and interpreting these using either modelsfor dark matter or alternative gravity theories

The ROB involvement in many solar-system explo-ration missions goes along with the modelling ofthe interior structure and dynamics of terrestrialplanets and moons of the solar system building onthe expertise developed from the 1960s on the rota-tion of the Earth New methods are developed to

37Cosmic Microwave Background



investigate the deep interior structure as well as thecrust and lithosphere A particular focus is on thestudy of the rotation gravity field and tides Earthrotation theoretical studies are presently on-goingthanks to a ERC AdG grant financing the projectROTANUT (Rotation and nutation of a wobblyEarth PI is V Dehant) whose objective is to betterunderstand the fluid core contributions to the vari-ations of the Earth orientation in space (so-callednutations) Historically one of the first tasks of ROBwas to build star catalogues and to contribute to thedetermination of the Universal Time from meridianobservations In the 1970s the ROB followed thetransition to atomic time with the installation ofatomic clocks and their integration in the world net-work used for the realization of the UTC The ROBalso provides a local representation of UTC avail-able in real time Current research is performed ontime transfer (ie remote atomic clock comparisons)methods and strategies The ROB is coordinatingthe EUREF Permanent Network38 (EPN) with a par-ticular emphasis on the study and mitigation oferror sources degrading the positions and velocitiesof Global Navigation Satellite System stations TheAstronomy and Astrophysics department providespublic access to atomic data to assist spectroscopistsin the identification of atomic lines in astrophysicalor laboratory spectra It is widely used in the as-tronomical and physical community It is involvedin the development of the open source photoioniza-tionPDR spectral synthesis code Cloudy which isthe only interstellar medium modelling tool that canproduce a self-consistent model of a photo ionizedregion including the PDR and molecular regionssurrounding it Research in the department furtherfocuses on visual and spectroscopic multiple stars(especially spectral disentangling) pulsating starscentral stars of planetary nebulae and hot stars(stellar winds rotation etc)

Not yet mentioned previously for ULiegravege are vari-ous theoretical studies on astroparticles eg show-ing that the constraints on circular polarisation ruleout axion-photon mixing as the explanation of thesystematic alignment of the polarisation of lightfrom quasars and intensive gravitational lens mod-elling

BIRA-IASBrsquos Space Physics division has developedexpertise on comets in the frame of Rosetta The

38httpepncbomabe

goal is to understand the volatile composition andthe isotopic composition and to explain how thesecan be traced back to the properties of dense molec-ular clouds or processes that occurred during solarsystem formation and subsequent evolution Theemphasis is on gas-grain interactions and the asso-ciated chemistry This work is carried out in closecollaboration with the ULBrsquos research group onQuantum Chemistry and Photophysics

Within ULiegravege (UR GEOLOGY) the StG ERC ELiTE(PI is E Javaux) focus on the study of Early LifeTraces and Evolution and Implications for AstrobiologyAstrobiology studies the origin evolution and dis-tribution of life in the Universe starting with lifeon Earth the only biological planet known so farThe project ELiTE consists on identifying the earlytraces of life and their preservation conditions char-acterizing their biological affinities determiningthe timing pattern and causes (biological environ-mental) of major steps in evolution in particularthe rise of biological complexity (the evolution ofcyanobacteria and the domain Eucarya) Astrobio-logical implications include refining criteria for thedetection of unambiguous extraterrestrial biosigna-tures The project aims therefore to investigate theearly traces and diversification of life and the chang-ing habitability conditions of Earth that sustainedlife from its earliest traces in the Archean throughthe Proterozoic These studies are improving thecharacterization of (1) biosignatures and analyticalprotocols useful for paleobiology and exobiologymissions (eg as co-PI of instrument CLUPI andcollaborator for RLS on ExoMars 2020) and of (2)interactions between the biosphere the geosphereand the atmosphere through time These last twopoints are also the focus of the lAP PLANET TOP-ERS39 (Planets Tracing the Origin Preservation Evolu-tion of their Reservoirs PI V Dehant at ROB co-PI EJavaux at ULiegravege V Debaille at ULB AC Vandaeleat BIRA-IASB P Claeys at VUB F Vanhaecke atUGent T Spohn at DLR Germany)

Gravitational wave astrophysics is another branchof astrophysics in development in Belgium Thegravitational waves centre40 (KULeuven ULB UCLand VUB) is a recent initiative focussed on the theo-retical study of gravitational waves KULeuven and

39httpiuap-planet-topersomabe40httpsfyskuleuvenbegwc



ULB are part of the COST (European Co-operationin Science amp Technology) action CA16104 Gravi-tational waves black holes and fundamental physicsthrough T Hertog and G Compegravere Gravitationalwave source modelling is currently in developmentfor extreme mass ratio inspiral and merger eventssupported by the ERC StG HoloBHC (PI G Com-pegravere) and ERC CoG HoloQosmos (PI T Hertog)Fundamental physics signatures are also under de-velopment at KULeuven (B Vercnocke)

6 Cosmology

61 CosmochemistryCosmochemistry uses the chemical composrtion(elemental and isotopic) of meteorites to date andinvestigate the condensation of the solar nebulaincluding the possible late injection of stellar ma-terial the accretion of dust newly condensed withpresolar grains the formation and differentiationof asteroids and planetary evolution The Labora-toire G-Time at ULB (V Debaille) and the AMGC atVUB (Analytical Environmental and Geo- Chem-istry S Goderis and P Claeys) collaborate on thistopic through several BELSPO projects and the lAPPLANET TOPERS An ERC StG (ISoSyC) on thetopic has also been granted to V Debaille (2014-2019) To obtain meteorite and micrometeoritessamplesseveral field campaigns have been orga-nized in Antarctica and more than 1000 meteoritesare now present in the Belgian Antarctic collectionat the Royal Belgian Institute for Natural SciencesState-of-the-art analytical facilities including sev-eral multi-collection-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometers at ULB VUB and UGent areused for performing high-precision isotope analy-ses

62 Early UniverseSince 2011 the Institute for Theoretical Physics (ITF)at KULeuven has pursued an active research pro-gram in early universe cosmology This includesthe study of inflation in the early universe its em-bedding in quantum gravity based models of thebig bang and its possible observational signaturesmost notably in the form of (very long wavelength)gravitational waves As such this program serves asa bridge between fundamental high-energy physics

and gravitational wave observations It is supportedin part by the ERC CoG HoloQosmos

The Service de Physique Theacuteorique at ULB and the CP3at UCL have a long-term activity on the physics atthe interplay between particle physics and physicsof the Early universe This includes mechanismsof baryogenesis and leptogenesis to explain theemergence of the asymmetry between matter andantimatter of the universe models of dark matter(WIMPs axions primordial black holes) phase tran-sitions in the Early universe associated to the break-ing of local and global symmetry the role of neutri-nos in cosmology and in astrophysics mechanismsof inflation including the generation of primordialinhomogeneities and their evolution physics of theCMB and of the dark age etc The activities atULB also include the field of cosmic rays (includingneutrinos positrons antiprotons and gamma-rays)and ultra-high energy cosmic rays in particular thestudy of anisotropies (member of the Telescope Ar-ray collaboration) and the modelling of the galacticand extragalactic magnetic fields



Research Activities in PlasmaPhysics in Belgium

R WeynantsDepartment of Physics Royal Military Academy

30 Avenue de la RenaissanceRenaissancelaan 1000 Brussels

1Plasma physics research in Belgium is tradition-ally organised along three main lines astrophysicalplasmas hot or fusion plasmas and cold plasmas orgas discharge technology plasmas This text gives aconcise and therefore non-exhaustive review of theactivities in these three areas at the Belgian univer-sities and research institutionsAn important part of this work is taking place inthe context of national or international cooperationthus providing a lot of leverage to the relativelysmall groups that are involved As such the astro-physical effort draws strength from collaborationswithin Horizon 2020 projects [1] such as SOTERIASPACECAST SOLSPANET SWIFF and eHEROESand the Virtual Space Weather Modelling CentreConsortium (VSWMC) [2] within the framework ofthe European Space Agency (ESA) Hot plasmason the other hand are mostly studied in the con-text of thermonuclear fusion research by means ofmagnetic confinement Since 2014 this Europe wideactivity is no longer taking place in the frameworkof an Association with EURATOM but within thecontext of the Consortium for the Development ofFusion Energy EUROfusion [3]Please note that in the area of plasma technologya lot of activities are multi-disciplinary and no at-


tempt is therefore made to draw a border betweenphysics chemistry and technology of material de-velopment An important sub-area here is plasmasurface interaction for which an Interuniversity At-traction Pole (lAP) exists since 2007A last preliminary remark concerns the relative new-comer in this research field that is the dusty plasmaDust grains can be immersed in ambient plasma be-come electrically charged and can thereby give riseto new sometimes intriguing phenomena Dustyplasmas are intensively studied by space physicistsin this country but also by the gas discharge plasmacommunity

1 AstrophysicsMost of the Belgian plasma effort in astrophysicsconcentrates on the phenomena occurring in theSun and on the interaction of the solar wind withthe heliosphere and the earth magneto- and iono-sphere and its role as driver of Space WeatherOf particular importance in recent years has beenthe collaboration within the context of the ESA orEU projects mentioned earlier but also within theCHARM IAP P708 network on contemporary as-trophysical and heliospheric modelling involvingthe Centre for mathematical Plasma Astrophysics[4] at KU Leuven the Astronomical Observatory[5] at UGent the Fluid and Plasma Dynamics Re-search Unit [6] at ULB the Solar Physics ResearchDepartment of the Royal Observatory of Belgium



[7] and the Solar Wind Research Unit of the BelgianInstitute for Space Aeronomy [8] together withgroups at Leiden (NL) and Durham (UK) The workpackages included

bull the coupling of existing tools (software andnumerical solvers) and models (PDE mod-elsparticle treatmentsradiative effects) to-wards more realistic multi-physics descrip-tions

bull the confrontation of model predictions withthe vastly increased armada of space instru-ments monitoring the Sun and the heliosphere

bull the role of turbulence in particle accelerationon astrophysical plasmas

bull the multi-scale description by correlatingMHD and kinetic models

bull the role of radiation on the dynamics in gasesand plasmas

These efforts are further assisted and reinforced byspecific research topics of the individual groupsAs such CmPAKULeuven [4] concentrates its re-search on the dynamical interaction between plas-mas and magnetic fields covering hereby a widerange of phenomena such as many aspects of ourlocal space weather where magnetic activity in thesolar atmosphere controls the appearance of wavesinstabilities flows shocks heating and the acceler-ation of the solar plasma into our heliosphere Alsocovered are planetary and stellar magnetosphericphysics the turbulent motions in accretion disks orthe relativistic jets emerging from entire galaxiesCmPAKULeuven has also a significant effort onthe numerical modelling of plasmas from kineticto fluid descriptions going from non-relativistic torelativistic flow regimes The latter are particularlyimportant for the study of jetted outflows (ActiveGalactic Nuclei jets Gamma Ray Bursts ) Effectsof dust grains in rotating self-gravitating plasmasare also studied

The research of the UGent-Astronomical Observa-tory [5] concentrates on understanding the struc-ture origin and evolution of galaxies with a particu-lar focus on dwarf galaxies galaxy dynamics and in-terstellar dust (as a core team of the EU FP7-projectDustPedia) The team uses both multi-wavelength

observations and state-of-the-art numerical simula-tions and is involved in the development of instru-mentation for several new telescopes

ULB-Fluid and Plasma Dynamics [6] studies thedynamics of conductive flows and specialises in thenumerical simulation of hydrodynamic turbulenceDirect numerical simulations are complemented bylarge eddy simulations based on the application ofa spatial filter to the Navier-Stokes equation

The SIDC at ROB [7] monitors solar activity inmany wavelength bands using advanced imagingtechniques and provides high-level space weatherreports and solar activity predictions to industryand to the wider community

IASBBIRA [8] extensively studies the solar windproperties from satellite data (CLUSTER satellites)and models them by kinetic plasma descriptionsThe Energetic Particle Telescope (EPT) designed bythe laboratory in collaboration with the Centre forSpace Radiations at UCLouvain [9] and placed onboard the Belgian satellite PROBA- V is providingimportant information on the generation and lossprocesses associated with the Van Allen radiationbelts An extensive database on the conditions pre-vailing on Comet 67PG-G and obtained by theRosetta spacecraft was also gathered

2 Fusion PlasmasThe Laboratory for Plasma Physics of ERMKMS(LPP-ERMKMS) [10] is the implementing agent ofEUROfusion in Belgium Theoretical and experi-mental aspects of heating and confinement of fusionplasmas are the main focal points of its activitiesThe preferred heating method is that which seeksto make electromagnetic waves interact with thecyclotron motion of the plasma ions To this endrefined modelling codes are developed permittingthe optimised launching propagation and absorp-tion of the appropriate waves A spin-off of thesestudies is the design of high-power wave launchingand heating systems for fusion machines As suchthe design construction and testing of a new ITER-like antenna on JET (the Joint European Torus) hasled to proposal of a high power density launcher(sim10 MWm2) which was adopted by and is nowimplemented for ITER (the International Tokamak



Experimental Reactor) The confinement of fusionplasmas relies heavily on the thermal insulationprovided by the plasma edge properties The effectof edge turbulence possible tailored by the use ofradial electric fields or of plasma seeding by edgeradiating impurities on the thermal insulation isa further research topic of this group Note thatappropriate diagnostic means are developed whereneeded

The Belgian Nuclear Research Centre SCKbullCEN[11] provides the Belgian technology input to EU-ROfusion Although not related directly to plasmaphysics these studies form a crucial element inthe justification of the energy orientation of fusionplasmas Of particular importance is the testingof first wall and structural reactor materials underneutron bombardment A multi annual irradiationcampaign of innovative new tungsten alloys un-der High Temperature High Flux conditions in BR2started in 2017 Radiation hardened microelectron-ics for diagnostics and remote handling units un-der development with an industrial partner and anovel plasma current sensor based on birefringencein optical fibre are other recent research projectsRecently sensors to measure the local magnetic fieldin ITER during operation were successfully testedfor neutron exposure

At the Department of Applied Physics of UGentthe research unit Nuclear Fusion [12] developsnovel techniques for the real-time analysis of fusionplasma signals and images as well as data miningtechniques for massive fusion databases (disrup-tions scaling laws) using a probabilistic approachThe study of the physics the technology and theprocesses accompanying the application of plasmaheating using the ion cyclotron range of frequencymethod is another core research area pursued inclose collaboration with LPP-ERMKMS and theMPI for Plasma Physics in Munchen (D) Ghent Uni-versity is the coordinator of the Erasmus MundusrsquoInternational Doctoral College in Fusion Scienceand Engineeringrsquo and of the Erasmus Mundus rsquoEu-ropean Master in Nuclear Fusion Science and Engi-neering Physicsrsquo

At the KULeuven Department of Mechanical En-gineering [13] the neutral particle transport in theplasma edge is modelled with a Monte Carlo simu-lation of the kinetic equation taking into account

all microscopic processes Optimisation of magneticcontrol for power exhaust in divertor Tokamak re-actors is also studied

Experimental work is performed at UCLouvain(NAPS [14]) to provide absolute cross-sections formany elemental atomic or molecular reactions oc-curring in the edge of fusion plasmas or to calibratesome of the particle beams that are used as diag-nostic tools for many fusion plasma parameters

The kinetic and the fluid description of fusion plas-mas including magnetohydrodynamic effects heat-ing and neoclassical transport theories is activelystudied at ULB-Fluid and Plasma Dynamics [6]

At CPAKULeuven [4] several software tools havebeen developed and applied to diagnose tokamakequilibria (for both static and stationary rotating ax-isymmetric configurations) and accurately quantifyall MHD wave modes important for active and pas-sive MHD spectroscopy and instabilities occurringin fusion plasmas

3 Plasma technologyThe last few decades have seen an exponential de-velopment in industrial applications of cold plas-mas for such diverse purposes as material process-ing etching and coating plasma light sources anddisplays decontamination and detoxification envi-ronmental and medical applications etc SeveralBelgian groups contribute to the plasma physicalunderstanding of this area of plasma technologyand to the initiation of yet further applications

Several activities in plasma surface interaction arecurrently taking place in the context of Interuni-versity Attraction Pole (lAP) Project P734 on thePhysical Chemistry of Plasma-Surface Interaction(PSI) [15] The partners in this endeavour are ULB(4MAT [16] CHANI Plasma [17] UAntwerpen(PLASMANT [18]) UCLouvain (BSMA Polymercoating group [19]) UMons (Chemistry Department[20]) as well as groups from Toulouse and Eind-hoven This project merges the expertise of theresearch units in plasma diagnostics (optical elec-trical probe laser induced fluorescence and massspectrometry techniques) in the fundamental studyof the ionized gas phase and its hydrodynamics in



bulk plasma and plasma-surface interaction mod-elling (molecular dynamics Monte Carlo) and in(organic and inorganic) material synthesis func-tiona1ization and characterization using state-of-the-too1s The specific contributions of the partici-pant groups are appearing below

At ULB the 4 MAT group [16] performs experimen-tal and modelling investigations of plasma-catalysisfor CO2 or CO2H2O dissociation A further activ-ity deals with select different materials or coatingscapable of meeting the stringent mechanical andeconomical requirements of Micro CHP Applica-tions (ECOJET) The CHANI Plasma Team [17] tai-lors surfaces by atmospheric plasmas depositionof organic inorganic metal and hybrid nano-layersImportant projects are Transformation and val-orization of CO2 synthesis and grafting of nanopar-ticles to develop catalysts (including for fuel cells)and sensors degradation of COV by atmosphericplasma process synthesis of fluorinated membranesfor fuel cell applications study of water reactivityat a plasmapolymer interface

The BSMA Polymer coating group of UCLouvain[18]) focuses on the understanding of the structureand the local chemistry of polymers synthesized ortreated in (almost) atmospheric pressure plasmas

The Chemistry of Plasma Surface InteractionsUnit of UMons [19] studies the conversion of pol-luting gases synthesizes nano-objects and depositsthin layers by means of Physical vapour deposi-tion (PVD) and Plasma-enhanced chemical vapourdeposition (PECVD)

At UAntwerpen the PLASMANT research group[20] covers a broad spectrum of plasma applicationsIt aims at plasma-based optimisation of CO2 con-version into value-added chemicals and renewablefuels and of nitrogen fixation In plasma medicinethe potentiality of the reactive species in plasma jetsfor bacterial killing and cancer treatment is stronglypursued Recent focal points in the domain of mi-croelectronics and nanotechnology are cryogenicplasma etching modelling of the growth of car-bon nanotubes and the design and developmentof nanocatalysts and nanoclusters With an eyeon analytic chemistry inductively coupled plasmasources operating at atmospheric pressure or glow

discharge sources at reduced pressure are exten-sively studied and modelled to extend their deploy-ment A number of simulation techniques are alsodeveloped in the realm of accelerated moleculardynamics (MD) and enhanced sampling in particu-lar force bias Monte Carlo (fbMC) simulations andcollective variable-driven hyperdynamics (CVHD)simulations

At the Department of Applied Physics of UGentthe research unit Plasma Technology [21] uses non-thermal plasmas for the abatement of volatile or-ganic compounds in waste gas streams and for bio-material treatment such as the treatment of porousscaffolds and biodegradable polymers and cleaningof metallic surfaces used for implants A number ofplasma sources at medium or atmospheric pressureare further used for the treatment of polymer filmsand textiles The Plasma Physics and Engineeringgroup [22] has three main lines of investigation(i) absolute density measurements of active species(OH O O3 Arm) in cold plasmas by means of laserspectroscopy (ii) the development of novel atmo-spheric pressure plasma sources for applications insurface engineering biomedical and environmentaltechnology (iii) plasma generation and dynamicsin bubbles plasma-liquid interactions and radicalproduction in connection to material and wastetreatment applications

At UNamur the Laboratoire interdisciplinairede spectroscopie eacutelectronique (LISE) [23] appliesplasma treatment techniques (cleaning coatingfunctionalization) to a variety of materials suchas nanotubes fullerene graphene ceramics poly-mers and biomaterials and investigates their surfaceproperties

VITO the Flemish institute for technological re-search [24] currently focuses on cold plasma tech-nology at atmospheric pressure for a broad rangeof surface treatment applications Applications in-clude the control of adhesion or release propertiesbiofunctiona1 anti-bacterial and low friction coat-ings etc Moreover plasma enhanced catalysis isstudied to convert greenhouse gases into usefulchemical precursors VITO has developed severalatmospheric plasma systems for specific surfacefunctiona1ization in 2017 the spin-off Apemcowas founded which builds and maintains plasma-machines based on VITOrsquos know-how More infor-mation can be found on wwwapemcoeu



At IMO the Institute for Materials ResearchUHasselt [25] a number of plasma techniques areused for the deposition and synthesis of materialssuch as UHV plasma etching reactive ion etchingand microwave plasma-enhanced CVD With the lat-ter a wide variety of diamond layers can be grownon several substrates possessing unique propertiesfor advanced applications such as dye sensitizedsolar cells or diamond UV -detectors

Het Interuniversitair Micro-Elektronica Centrum(IMEC) [26] studies plasma etching by means ofinductively-coupled plasma (ICP) or RF capacitivelycoupled sources (RFCCP) or by high-density plasmachemical vapour deposition (HDPCVD) Methodsare developed on how to cope with the continuousdownscaling of integrated circuit and the use of newmaterials Recent lines of investigation are damageprevention such as by the use of low energy andlow fluence or cryogenic precursor condensationwhile etching porous substrates

A research group at the Von Karman Institute (VKI)[27] works on the synthesis of metallic and ceramicnanoparticles by means of radio frequency (RF) ther-mal plasma processes The research activities aremainly focused on the development and validationof mathematical models of the plasma reactor andof nanoparticle formation (generation and growth)VKI also develops small scale plasma sources (Min-itorch and MPT) based on RF and microwave togenerate subsonic and supersonic plasma flow un-der situations representative of high speed atmo-spheric entry conditions also studied on the PLAS-MATRON device the world largest inductively cou-pled plasma torch

References[1] httpcordiseuropaeuprogrammercn

863_enhtml

[2] httpsesa-vswmceu

[3] httpswwweuro-fusionorg

[4] httpwiskuleuvenbecpa

[5] httpwwwugentbewephysics-astronomyenresearchastronomy

[6] httpaquaulbacbehome

[7] httpwwwsidcbe

[8] httpwwwaeronomiebe

[9] httpwebcsruclacbeuclelicsr

[10] httpfusionrmaacbe

[11] httpwwwsckcenbeenTechnology_futureNuclear_fusion

[12] httpswwwugentbeeaappliedphysicsenresearchfusion

[13] httpswwwmechkuleuvenbeentmeresearchthermalhome

[14] httpsuclouvainbeenresearch-institutesimcnnaps

[15] httpswwwbelspobebelspofedraprojaspl=enampCOD=P72F34

[16] http4matulbacbe

[17] httpchaniulbacberesearchphppart=B

[18] httpsuclouvainbeenresearch-institutesimcnbsma

[19] httpsportailumonsacbeen2universitefacultesfsservicesinstitut_chimiechimie_interactions_plasma-surfacepagesdefaultaspx

[20] httpswwwuantwerpenbeenrgplasmant

[21] httpswwwugentbeeaappliedphysicsenresearchplasmaplasmatechnologyhtm

[22] httpswwwugentbeeaappliedphysicsenresearchplasmaplasmaphysicsandengineeringhtm

[23] httpwwwunamurbesciencesphysiquelise

[24] httpsplasmavitobeen

[25] httpwwwuhasseltbeIMO

[26] httpswwwresearchgatenetinstitutionimecdepartmentPlasma_Etching

[27] httpswwwvkiacbe



Research Activities inComputational Physics in Belgium

Xavier Gonze and Gian-Marco RignaneseIMCNNAPS Universite Catholique de Louvain

8 chemin des etoiles L070301B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve

1Computational physics (CP) is in first instance thestudy and implementation of numerical and sym-bolic models and algorithms for the simulation ofphysical systems based on an existing quantitativetheory CP is maturing as the third leg of the sci-entific enterprise alongside with experiment andtheory Computer performance that evolves at anexponential rate allows new ways of apprehendingand solving problems We are now able to inves-tigate computationally fundamental questions inphysics with unprecedented fidelity and level of de-tail And that trend will surely continue for manyyears

However CP implies more than using simulation toprovide insight and interpretation The IUAP com-mission on computational physics [1] has broad-ened the field to include the computational controland data processing of experiments programmingand computational environments and the physi-cal basis of computer machinery Thus CP alsoinvolves the acquisition and management of seas ofexperimental data (as in high-energy physics) andnew techniques of data acquisition and handling

As a result computational physics covers a very


wide range of problems from quantum mechanicalcalculations to highly complex data processing andit is not always easy to pinpoint specific research inthe field New developments appear mostly as by-products of other researches made in different fieldsby groups that rely on computers to perform theirworks This inventory of the Belgian contributionsin CP will thus collect works made by physiciststhat are heavily involved m developing and improv-ing computer codes and architecture in order toperform their research

For convenience the following global structure forthe present inventory2 was chosen

1 Numerical and symbolic models and algo-rithms for the simulation of physical systems

2 Computational control and data processing ofexperiments

3 Programming and computational environ-ments

4 The physical basis of computer machinery

2An update of the 2010 version by Gonze and Weynantsand the 2005 version by HP Garnir



1 Numerical and symbolicmodels and algorithms forthe simulation of physicalsystems

11 Atomic and molecular physicsand astrophysics

The Institut de Physique Nucleacuteaire Atomique etde Spectroscopie at ULiegravege [2] has several researchtopics in Computational Physics The cold atomphysics group develops numerical simulations inthe field of cavity quantum electrodynamics withcold atoms The atom-field interaction is modeledin the particular case when the atomic motion mustbe described quantum mechanically and specialalgorithms are used and developed to solve theSchroumldinger equation Cold atoms are very oftenused in the current thematic of quantum comput-ers The group Theoretical calculations in atomicphysics determines new atomic data related to theradiative and collisional properties of atoms andions based on sophisticated computer codes suchas HFR SST and MCDF

In the field of atomic physics and more particularlyatomic spectroscopy substantial progress has beenachieved by the UMons Astrophysics group (PAAS)[3] by improving sophisticated computer codes thatallow to model in a more and more realistic waythe atomic structures characterized by very complexelectronic configurations

Along the same line the ULB Quantum Chemistryand Atomic Physics unit of the service of Chimiequantique et photophysique [4] focuses on the cal-culation of the structure and dynamics of atomicand molecular species that are relevant in variousfields such as spectroscopy atmospheric chemistryastrophysics and astrochemistry cold moleculesnanoelectronics or quantum computing

The Center for Molecular Modeling of UGent[5] develops and disseminates [6] several com-putational tools to facilitate and automate theanalysis of molecules and their dynamics (MD-Tracks MolMod) to construct molecular models(Zeobuilder) or to analyze the electronic structureof molecules (HiPart)

Some members of the Nanoscopic Physics (NAPS)pole of the Institute of Condensed Matter andNanosciences (IMCN) of UCLouvain [7] de-velop algorithms for the numerical resolution ofSchrodinger equation in time to study the interac-tion processes of atoms and molecules with ultra-short electromagnetic pulses

Molecular modeling is also done at Laboratory forPhysics of Surfaces and Interfaces (LPSI) of UMons[8] Using the complementary techniques of molec-ular dynamics (MD) Monte-Carlo simulations andgenetic algorithms dedicated codes and softwareare developed providing access to all types of in-teraction potentials and very large systems of gt1000000 particles Specific modules allow to studyviscosity surface tension and static and dynamiccontact angles

12 Condensed Matter andNanosystems

The ab-initio calculation of the entire structure ofa molecule or of an aggregate of atoms (nanostruc-ture) requires a huge amount of calculations TheABINIT project [9] initiated in Belgium in 1997 andcoordinated in Louvain-la-Neuve is aimed at thecalculation of such structures and involves a lota computer code development On the technicalside the huge code (800000+ lines) freely availablerelies on modem techniques for its developmentand the program itself is continuously improved bymore than 50 developers all around the word andhas more than 1900 registered users At UCLou-vain the research mainly focuses inter alea on de-velopments in Many-Body Perturbation Theory forelectronic transport and optical properties calcula-tions temperature-dependent and zero-point mo-tion effects on electronic and optical properties im-proved determination of relaxed atomic geometryand structural parameters dielectric properties andmagnetic responses and improved functionals forvibrational properties A new axis of research high-throughput calculations has opened recently Sim-ulations based on ab-initio calculations at UCLou-vain in the Nanoscopic Physics (NAPS) pole of theInstitute of Condensed Matter and Nanosciences(IMCN) also rely on other software applicationsand cover optical functional materials carbon-basednanostructures materials for nanoelectronics [10]



At the Physics Department of ULiegravege the groupsof Theoretical Physics of Materials [11] Nanoma-terials [12] and Physics of Solids Interfaces andNanostructures [13] are active in extending ab ini-tio tools such as ABINIT Quantum Expresso Crys-tal Octopus and BoltzTrap in different domains TDDFT hybrid functionals molecular dynamicsnon-linear optical susceptibilities Raman tensorsand electro-optic coefficients electrical resistivityelectron-phonon coupling thermoelectric proper-ties Most of the main ab initio software packagesare also used for the study of a wide diversity ofsystems ferroelectric and multiferroic nanostruc-tures 2DEG at oxide interfaces metals and inter-metallics phase-change materials liquid semicon-ductors nanodiamonds semiconducting and metal-lic nanostructures carbon nanotubes

Another group at the ULiegravege the group of The-oretical Physical Chemistry [14] is modeling theelectronic optical and transport properties of dif-ferent kinds of nanostructures and molecular sys-tems These models are applied to molecular logicand could lead to the design of nanosensors Thegroup is also active in the field of attochemistryand ultrafast molecular dynamics It develops time-dependent quantum methodologies to follow thedynamics of coherent electronic wave packets pre-pared by ultrashort attopulse in molecular systemsas well as their probing by photoionization

The Condensed Matter Theory (CMT) group ofthe Department of Physics of the UAntwerpen[15] conducts theoretical research in the area ofmesoscopic physics and nanophysics Many com-puter programs have been developed over theyears Hands-on experience is available on calcu-lations of the strain distribution in self-assembleddots Hartree-Fock approaches density functionaltheory finite difference techniques eg to solvecoupled nonlinear differential equations (eg theGinzburg-Landau equations) Monte Carlo simula-tions molecular dynamics simulations variationalquantum Monte Carlo simulations stochastic vari-ational techniques For its calculations the grouprelies on its own clusters of workstations and onthe UA cluster (see section 3)

Computational modeling of materials is also a pri-mary research program of the EMAT group ofUAntwerpen [16] First-principles electronic struc-ture calculations are carried within the Density

Functional Theory formalism and beyond (GWBethe-Salpeter) to study the structural electronicoptical and magnetic properties of functional ma-terials A large part of its work is devoted to thedetermination of electron energy core and low lossspectra for carbon based materials and metallicnanoparticles whereas optical spectra have beencalculated for TCOs and solar cell absorbers Ahigh-throughput methodology is used in combina-tion with DFT calculations to screen large classes ofpotential candidate materials with specific proper-ties and improved performance Another importantpart of the work is devoted to the effect of impuri-ties and native defects on the electronic and opticalproperties of these materials

The Centre for Molecular Modelling of UGent [5]performs computational material research on thenanoscale In its quest to design optimal catalyststhe group aims at predicting from first principlesaccurate rate constants for the chemical kineticsof catalytic reactions taking place in nanoporousmaterials Under particular scrutiny are zeolitematerials and Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs)

The Laboratory for Physics of Surfaces and Inter-faces of UMons [8] studies the properties of materialsurfaces and their interactions with surroundingmedia Computer modeling is a tool to enhancethe performance of a material as regards coatingwetting adsorption friction and wear optics etc

The Centre de recherches en Physique de la Matiegravereet du Rayonnement (PMR) of UNamur [17] has along experience in numerical modeling for solidstate physics and nanomaterials Some of their elec-tronic and optical properties have been explainedsuccessfully by researchers of PMR including egstructural coloration of insects Currently there isa strong focus on carbon nanostructures and two-dimensional materials The group also has expertisein the modeling of nucleation and growth of thinfilms and of electron energy loss spectroscopy

13 Particle PhysicsTo predict or analyze the events and experimen-tal signals expected from high-energy acceleratorscomputational particle physics (CPP) has developedseveral important tools such as numerical compu-tations on lattice field theory the automatic calcu-



lation of particle interaction or decay event gen-erators and data reduction software Several Bel-gian groups are active in this area Variational lat-tice theory and non-perturbative quantum chromodynamics are developed by the Mathematical andTheoretical Physics group of UGent [18] The col-lider physics simulation tools developed by theCosmology Particle Physics and Phenomenologygroup at UCLouvain [19] provide all aspects of anevent chain and are widely used by the high-energyphysics community at large Optimization of theCherenkov detectors of the IceCube Neutrino Ob-servatory is performed by the Elementary ParticlePhysics group at UGent [20] by means of detailedMonte-Carlo simulations At the Interuniversity In-stitute for High Energies IIHE (ULB- VUB) [21] sim-ilar techniques were developed to optimize PositronEmission Tomography detectors

The already mentioned high-energy groups ofUGent UCLouvain ULB and VUB as well as theParticle Physics team at UAntwerpen [22] exten-sively apply the CPP tools in their elaborate partic-ipation to the data analysis of the Compact MuonSolenoid and NA62 at CERN and the IceCube po-lar detectors In addition they deploy together animportant High-Energy Physics Tier-2 computingcenter for the CMS experiment that is part of theWorldwide LHC Computing Grid (W-LGG) (seesection 3) The resources deployed allow the treat-ment of data volumes of unprecedented size andcomplexity in the field of particle physics

14 Physics of the GlobeThe GeoHydrodynamics and Environment Re-search group at ULiegravege [23] uses 3D models ofmarine systems to predict circulation patterns pol-lution dispersion ecosystem evolution thermoha-line structures of the ocean and many other marineparameters To do so a set of coupled non-linear3D partial differential equations is solved numer-ically using finite volume methods To be able tohandle the size of the problem (107 state variablesadvanced in time over 104 time steps) parallel com-puting based on domain decomposition is imple-mented

The G Lemaicirctre Centre for Earth and Climate re-search of UCLouvain [24] studies the climate evo-lution and the interaction between human activ-

ities and the natural environment They rely onvery complex calculations that are performed byapplying different models that are continuouslyimproved All these calculations involve huge com-puter power and the development of new algo-rithms

15 Dynamic systemsIncluded here are

1 Continuous dynamical systems Hamiltoniansystems Liouvillesrsquos theorem dissipative sys-tems local stability analysis non-linear oscil-lators bifurcation analysis in one and two di-mensions

2 Discrete dynamical systems Iterated mapslogistic map cycles and stability period dou-bling bifurcations Lyapunov exponents

3 Stochastic processes Brownian motionstochastic calculus

A large coordinated effort is devoted to Dynami-cal Systems their Control and Optimization in thecontext of several Interuniversity Attraction Poles(lAP) which have been running since 1987 and havebeen extended till 2017 [25] The work packagesconcern (i) large scale data and systems (ii) esti-mation and modeling and (iii) distributed systemsdecision control and communication This effort ismultidisciplinary and finds many applications notjust in physics but throughout the sciences TheWeb pages of the partners are INMA (UCL) [26]OPTEC (KUL) [27] NAXYS (UNamur) [28] SYS-TEMS (UGent) [29] ELEC (VUB) [30] Pocircle BIOSYS(UMons) [31] Systems and Modeling (ULiegravege) [32]The Federal lAP program is however finished nowand a new structure for interregional research hasbeen set up (the EOS funding)

The Department of Applied Mathematics and Com-puter Sciences at UGent [33] works on the develop-ment of numerical methods and software for prob-lems that can be formulated in terms of differentialequations many of which are inspired by physicalapplications Particular attention is paid to numer-ical methods and software for dynamical systemsof ODEs allowing bifurcations and for the Sturm-Liouville and Schroumldinger equations Among thedeveloped software MATCONT and MA TSLISEshould be highlighted



16 Astrophysics and CosmologyIn its development of the Energetic Particle Tele-scope (EPT) the Center for Space Radiation (CSR)[34] of UCLouvain in collaboration with the Bel-gian Institute for Space Aeronomy [35] is simulating(by Monte-Carlo methods) the interactions of ener-getic particles present in space with matter or gasby using the CERN developed GEANT softwaretoolkit [36]

The Centre for Mathematical Plasma - Astrophysicsof KULeuven [37] studies space Weather (the pop-ular name for energy-releasing phenomena in themagnetosphere) and coordinates the EU-FP7 SpaceWeather Integrated Forecasting Framework It de-velops on massively parallel computers (sharedwith the Von Karman Institute for fluid dynamics[38] specific computational models based on thethree-dimensional magneto hydrodynamics (MHD)equations as well as kinetic (Particle-in-Cell) sim-ulations It also creates the software needed toimplement such computational models on modemsupercomputers

17 Physics of Deformable Solidsand Fluids

Computational physics of deformable solids andfluids is a very important subject for engineeringBecause of this reason research groups will tradi-tionally appear in polytechnic faculties or engineer-ing schools For sake of completeness we neverthe-less mention several groups working in this domainin Belgium

At UCLouvain the Institute of Mechanics Materi-als and Civil Engineering [39] develops multi-scalemodeling for such diverse applications as oceanmodeling crystal growth the deformation and frac-ture of advanced metallic alloys composites andbonded joints as well as for cardiovascular and res-piratory applications

The Service Sciences des Polymegraveresrdquo at ULB [40]uses statistical mechanics and numerical simulationtechniques in order to model at the microscopiclevel the structure as well as processes which takeplace inside complex states of matter (polymers butalso soft matter) They design and develop simula-tion programs for molecular dynamics techniquesMonte Carlo or Brownian dynamics

At the von Karman Institute for fluid dynamics[38] Computational Fluid Dynamics is used todo research on multiple fields among them Tur-bulence and aero-acoustic effects (Reynolds Aver-aged Navier-Stokes Large Eddy Simulation andorDirect Numerical Simulation) Multiphase flows(Large Eddy Simulation with Volume of Fluids)Prediction of hypersonic re-entry involving com-plex multi-physics (Direct Simulation Monte Carlocoupled with Finite Volume or Residual Distribu-tion Schemes) Multidisciplinary Optimization ampDesign method with Artificial Intelligence and Neu-ral Network

The Computational Fluid Dynamics group ofVUB [41] focuses on algorithmic developments forschemes and solvers as well as large eddy simula-tion and its application in different fields such ascomputational aero acoustics combustion biolog-ical flows sedimentation problems etc Researchon fluid dynamics is also performed in the Fluidmechanics group of UGent [42] and the group ofthermal and fluid engineering at KULeuven [43]

2 Computational control anddata processing ofexperiments

This topic is one of the concerns of the lAP VII-DYSCO collaboration mentioned under 15 [25]

The Laboratory of Biophysics and BioMedicalPhysics (BIMEF) of UAntwerpen [44] specializes ininterdisciplinary physics research in the biologicaland medial field The group has three main researchdirections biomechanics and optical metrologymolecular biophysics and spectroscopy vestibularresearch and medical statistics Current researchtopics in computational control and data processingof experiments include the development of electro-optic metrology systems for shape deformation andvibration measurements in biomedical applicationsand biomechanics and finite element modeling inbiomechanics with special focus on human middleear and cochlear mechanics and functional biome-chanics in animals

At ULiegravege the IPNAS laboratory [3] has con-structed many new apparatus that use imbedded



microprocessors and rely on the virtual instrumen-tation paradigm [45]

The Databases and Theoretical Computer Sciencegroup of UHasselt [46] new techniques to identifyincompleteness inconsistencies inaccuracies anderrors in databases

3 Programming andcomputationalenvironments

31 Belgian research computerinfrastructure

The Belgian computer infrastructure has seen a pro-found restructuring over the last decade throughthe formation of consortia in the Flemish and theFrench communities

The five Flemish University associations have cre-ated in 2007 a partnership called Vlaams Super-computer Centum [47] aiming to align and inte-grate their existing supercomputer infrastructureto make their expertise available to the public andprivate funded research and to construct of a com-petitive grid and HPC infrastructure available toall researchers in Flanders The VSC is financed bythe Flemish Government The VSC-infrastructureconsists of two layers The central Tier-1 infrastruc-ture is designed to run large parallel jobs It alsocontains a small accelerator testbed to experimentwith upcoming technologies The Tier-2 layer runsthe smaller jobs is spread over a number of sitesis closer to users and more strongly embedded inthe campus networks The Tier-2 clusters are alsointerconnected and integrated with each other

The Tier-1 supercomputerAt the end of October 2016 VSC inaugurated its sec-ond Tier-1 supercomputer at the data center of KULeuven representing an investment of 55 millioneuros The company NEC was selected to build themachine through a public tender procedure Thissupercomputer which consists of 580 computingnodes with two 14-core Intel Xeon processors hasa processing power of more than 600 TFlops theequivalent of 2000 fast PCs It has a capacity thatis three times that of the first Tier-1 supercomputer

at VSC The new Tier-1 supercomputer is equippedwith the latest Intel processors Also the memorythe internal network and the storage capacity havebeen adapted allowing the supercomputer to effi-ciently perform complex computations At time ofits installation this new supercomputer was one ofthe 200 fastest computers in the world [48]

The main local Tier-2 clustersThe Tier-2 of UA comprises two clusters Thefirst one Hopper consists of 168 nodes (with two10- core Intel E5-2680v2 Ivy Bridge) developing 75TFlops Storage capacity is 100 TBThe second cluster Leibniz was installed in thespring of 20 17 It is a NEC system consisting of152 nodes with two 14-core intel E5-2680v4 Broad-well generation CPUs connected through a EDRInfiniBand network 144 of these nodes have 128GB RAM the other 8 have 256 GB RAM The nodesdo not have a sizable local disk [49]The Tier-2 of VUB (Hydra) consists of 3 clusters ofsuccessive generations of processors with a peakcapacity of 75 TFlops (estimated) The total storagecapacity is 446 TB It has a relatively large mem-ory per computing node and is therefore best fitfor computing jobs that require a lot of memoryper node or per core This configuration is comple-mented by a High Throughput Computing (HTC)grid infrastructure [50]The Tier-2 of Ghent University (Stevin) representsa capacity of 226 TFlops (11328 cores over 568nodes) and a storage capacity of 1430 TB It is com-posed of several clusters 1 of which is intended forsingle-node computing jobs and 4 for multi-nodejobs One cluster has been optimized for memory-intensive computing jobs and BigData problems[51]The joint KU LeuvenUHasselt Tier-2 housed byKU Leuven focuses on small capability computingand tasks requiring a fairly high disk bandwidthThe infrastructure consists of a thin node clusterwith 7616 cores and a total capacity of 230 TFlopsA shared memory system with 14 TB of RAM and640 cores yields an additional 12 TFlops A totalstorage of 280 TB provides the necessary IO capac-ity Furthermore there are a number of nodes withaccelerators (including the GPUXeon Phi clusterpurchased as an experimental tier-1 setup) and 2visualization nodes [52]

The VSC system is mostly used for space weather



calculations fluid and plasma dynamics nanotech-nology modeling of materials biophysics bioinfor-matics and computational chemistry

In 2010 the 5 universities of the French-speakingcommunity of Belgium created the Consortium desEacutequipements de Calcul Intensif (CECI) [53] that issupported by the FRS-FNRS The main facilities ofthe consortium also comprise a Tier-1 and a Tier-2infrastructure

The Tier-1 supercomputerThe Tier-1 supercomputer (zenobe) consists of twoparts with nearly 14000 computing cores result-ing from an investment of nearly 55 million eurosachieved in three stages

bull a calculator acquired in 2011 constituting abase of approximately 3300 calculation cores

bull its extension financed by the grant PRACESupercomputer Tier-1 of the Walloon Regionadding at the end of 20 13 about 8200 comput-ing cores to this base and

bull the renewal at the end of 2015 of the calcula-tion nodes acquired 4 years earlier providing5760 computing cores of the latest architecture

The Tier-1 configuration was put into operation inJuly 2014 It has a sustained computing capacity ofmore than 330 TFlops Its best position in the worldranking of the 500 most powerful calculators wasrecorded in November 2014 in 300th place [54]

The main local Tier-2 clustersThe Tier-2 of UMons (dragon1) is a cluster of 26computing nodes each with two Intel Sandy Bridge8-cores E5-2670 processors at 26 GHz 128 GB ofRAM and 11 TB of local scratch disk space Thecompute nodes are interconnected with a GigabitEthernet network (10 Gigabit for the 36 TB NFS fileserver) Two additional nodes have two high-endNVIDIA Tesla 2175 GPUs (448 CUDA Cores6GBGDDR5515Gflops double precision) [55]The Tier-2 of UNamur (hercules) consists of ap-proximately 900 cores spread across 65 computenodes It mainly comprises 32 Intel Sandy Bridgenodes each with two 8-core E5-2660 processors at22 GHz and 64 or 128 GB of RAM (8 nodes) and32 Intel Westmere compute nodes each with twoX5650 6-core processors at 266 GHz and 36 GB 72GB (5 nodes) or 24 GB (5 nodes) of RAM All the

nodes are interconnected by a Gigabit Ethernet net-work and have access to three NFS file systems fora total capacity of 98 TB [56]The Tier-2 of ULB (vega) features 44 fat computenodes with 64 cores (four 16-cores AMD Bulldozer6272 processors at 21 GHz) and 256 GB of RAM in-terconnected with a QDR Infiniband network and70 TB of high performance GPFS storage [57]The Tier-2 of ULiegravege (nic4) consists of 128 computenodes with two 8-cores Intel E5-2650 processors at20 GHz and 64 GB of RAM (4 GBcore) intercon-nected with a QDR Infiniband network and havingexclusive access to a fast 144 TB FHGFS parallelfilesystem [58]The Tier-2 of UCLouvain comprises two clustersLemaitre2 comprises 112 compute nodes with two6-cores Intel E5649 processors at 253 GHz and 48GB of RAM (4 GBcore) The cluster has exclusiveaccess to a fast 120 TB Lustre parallel filesystemAll compute nodes and management (NFS LustreFrontend etc) are interconnected with a fast QDRInfiniband network This cluster will be replaced in2018 [59]Hmem mainly features 17 fatnodes with 48 cores(four 12-cores AMD Opteron 6174 processors at 22GHz) 2 nodes have 512 GB of RAM 7 nodes have256 GB and 7 nodes have 128 GB All the nodes areinterconnected with a fast Infiniband QDR networkand have a 17 TB fast RAID setup for scratch diskspace All the local disks are furthermore gatheredin a global 31 TB Fraunhofer file system (FHGFS)[60]

The Belgian WLCG CMS Tier-2 computing projectfor data analysis of the CMS experiment at theCERN laboratory which was mentioned in section13 consists of two physical clusters one being lo-cated in Brussels [61] and one in Louvain-la-Neuve[62] These two clusters also integrate computingresources for the IceCube and NA62 experiments aswell as the high energy physics simulation projectMadGraph As of January 2018 the two centersoffer 7000 cores of processing power and 5000 TBof disk storage

Belgian scientists can also respond to calls forproposals from PRACE [63] the EU partnership forAdvanced Computing in Europe that manages thefollowing Tier-0 resources- The 2 PFlops CURIE facility ofCEA Bruyeres-Le-Chatel France [64]



- The 59 PFlops WQUEEN facility at Forschungzen-trum Juelich (FZJ) Julich Germany [65]- The 68 PFlops SuperMUC of the Leibniz Super-computing Centre (LRZ) Garching Germany [66]- The 74 PFlops HAZEL ZEN facility at Hoechstleis-tungsrechenzentrum (HLRS) Stuttgart Germany[67]- The 111 PFlops MARENO STRUM facility at theBarcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) BarcelonaSpain [68]- the 13 PFlops MARCONI facility of CINECABologna Italy [69]- the 196 PFlops PIZ DAINT facility of SwissNational Supercomputing Centre (CSC) LuganoSwiss [70]

32 BELNET and BEgrid

In Belgium the universities colleges schools re-search centers and government departments areconnected by a national research network that pro-vides high-bandwidth Internet connection Thisinfrastructure called BELNET [71] has been initi-ated in 1989 by the Belgian Science Policy Officersquosprogramming department with the aim of enablingintensive transfer of data between scientists andremote connections to powerful computersIn 2003 BELNET started a new project called BE-grid [72] the computingdata grid infrastructure ofthe Belgium Grid for Research The general princi-ple of grid computing consists in the availability ofa network that connects geographically spread com-puting and storage resources while giving manyuser groups access to the network Grid computingmeans in fact globalization and virtualization ofcomputer infrastructures Current participants toBEgrid and providers or resources are KULeuvenUAntwerpen UGent ULB Vlaams Instituut voorde Zee (VLIZ) VUB and CETIC

4 The physical basis ofcomputer machinery

The Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (lMEC[73]) is heavily involved in the research aiming atthe reduction of the size and power dissipation ofcomputer chips Its efforts encompass material andtransistor architecture studies tool and process step

exploration integration options and advanced char-acterization towards process technology platformsapplicable in high-volume manufacturing of futurelogic and memory ICs All research carried out isinextricably linked with quantitative material anddevice characterization and reliability analysis

5 ConclusionsEven if this review is not exhaustive it proves thatcomputational physics activity in Belgium is im-portant and that a lot of physics groups are activein the field Computer programs are developedand improved in almost all universities often asbyproducts of main researches

References[1] wwwiupaporgcommissionscomputational-

physicsmandate

[2] wwwipnasulgacbe

[3] httphostingumonsacbehtmlagifTeamshtml

[4] httpwwwulbacbecpmtheoryhtml

[5] httpsmolmodugentbe

[6] httpsmolmodugentbesoftware

[7] httpuclouvainbeenresearch-institutesimcnnaps

[8] httpssharepoint1umonsacbefruniversitefacultesfsservicesinstitut_physiquephysique_surfaces_interfacespagesdefaultaspx

[9] wwwabinitorg

[10] httpuclouvainbeenresearch-institutesimcnnapsnumerical-simulation-at-the-nanoscalehtml

[11] httpwwwmaterialsulgacbecmsc_7705theoretical-physics-of-materials

[12] wwwnanomatulgacbe

[13] wwwspinulgacbe

[14] wwwtcpulgacbe



[15] wwwuantwerpenbeenrgcmt

[16] wwwuantwerpenbeenrgemat

[17] httppmrunamurbe

[18] httpmathphyugentbewpmtp

[19] httpcp3irmpuclacbeColliderPhysicsSimulation

[20] httpinwfsun1ugentbeonderzoekphpIceCube

[21] httpw3iiheacbeexperimentsphpexp=7

[22] wwwuantwerpenbeenrgparticle-physics-group

[23] httpmodboceulgacbe

[24] httpuclouvainbeenresearch-instituteseliteclim

[25] httpsitesuclouvainbedysco

[26] httpuclouvainbefrnode2107

[27] httpsetkuleuvenbeoptec

[28] wwwnaxysbe

[29] wwwsystemsugentbe

[30] httpvubirelecbe

[31] httptctsfpmsacbebiosysindexhtml

[32] wwwmontefioreulgacbeservicesstochasticnewdokuphpid=

[33] httpwwwugentbewetwisten


[35] wwwaeronomiebe

[36] httpgeant4cernch

[37] httpwiskuleuvenbeCmPA

[38] wwwvkiacbe


[40] wwwulbacbesciencespolphySciences_des_Polymeres

[41] httpmechvubacbethermodynamics re-search_topicshtm

[42] wwwugentbeeafloheacomenresearchgroupsflow

[43] wwwmechkuleuvenbeentmeresearchthermal

[44] wwwuantwerpenbeenrgbimef

[45] wwwipnasulgacbelaboipnasrecherchesrechercheshtml

[46] httpalphauhasseltberesearchgroupstheocomp

[47] wwwvscentrumbe

[48] wwwvscentrumbeenaccess-and-infrastructuretier-1

[49] wwwvscentrumbeinfrastructurehardwarehardware-ua

[50] wwwvscentrumbeinfrastructurehardwarehardware-ugent

[51] wwwvscentrumbeinfrastructurehardwarehardware-vub

[52] wwwvscentrumbeinfrastructurehardwarehardware-kul

[53] wwwceci-hpcbe

[54] httptier1cenaerobefrzenobe

[55] httpwwwceci-hpcbeclustershtmldragon1

[56] httpwwwceci-hpcbeclustershtmlhercules

[57] httpwwwceci-hpcbeclustershtmlvega

[58] httpwwwceci-hpcbeclustershtmlnic4

[59] httpwwwceci-hpcbeclustershtmllemaitre2

[60] httpwwwceci-hpcbeclustershtmlhmem

[61] httpw3iiheacbe

[62] httpcp3irmpuclacbeHPC

[63] wwwprace-rieu

[64] httpwww-hpcceafrencomplexetgcc-curiehtm

[65] wwwfz-juelichdeiasjscjuqueen



[66] wwwlrzdeservicescomputesupermuc

[67] wwwhlrsdesystemscray-xc40-hazel-hen

[68] wwwbscesmarenostrummarenostrum

[69] wwwcinecaitencontentMarconi

[70] wwwcscschcomputerspiz-daint

[71] wwwbelnetbe

[72] wwwbegridbe

[73] wwwimec-intcomenhome



Research Activities in HardCondensed Matter and

Semiconductor Physics in Belgium

Ewald Janssens - Yvan BruynseraedeLaboratory of Solid-State Physics and Magnetism

Department of Physics and Astronomy - KU LeuvenCelestijnenlaan 200 D BE-3001 Leuven

1 Condensed Matter and Semiconductor Physics isremarkable for the breadth and depth of its impacton physics as well as on other scientific disciplinesIt is a very active field with a stream of discoveriesin areas ranging from superconductors and semi-conductors to the optical electronic magnetic andmechanical properties of materials and devices Itincludes the study of well-characterized solid sur-faces interfaces and nanostructuresThe following briefly describe the main researchactivities at Physics Departments of Belgian Uni-versities The text is not an exhaustive review butmentions the topics studied in various laboratoriesFor more details we refer to the website addresses

1 University of Leuven

11 The Laboratory of Solid-StatePhysics and Magnetism (VSM)

Website httpfyskuleuvenbevsm

The laboratory is a leading center for research


into magnetic semiconducting dielectric and su-perconducting systems Specifically the overallgoal is to understand the above physical proper-ties in systems with reduced dimensionality andnanoscale confinement of charge spin and pho-ton The systems studied range in size from three-dimensional thin film heterostructures to individ-ual nanoscale clusters The laboratory has out-standing thin film and atomic cluster preparationexpertise with a range of in-situ characterizationand nano lithographic patterning techniques Sam-ple characterization and measurement is under-taken using state-of-the-art equipment includinga range of advanced scanning-probe microscopeslow-temperature systems for transport and magne-tization measurements Raman and photolumines-cence spectroscopes

111 The Research Group rdquoNanoscaleSuperconductivity amp Magnetismrdquo

Website httpsfyskuleuvenbevsmnsm

The main objective is to investigate the effect ofnanoscale confinement on the electrical magneticand optical properties of materials The groupwants to reveal the fundamental relation betweenquantized confined states and physical propertiesof these materials principle of quantum design



Scientifically quantum design is a challenging ob-jective in condensed matter physics since it bridgesthe gap between physics of single atoms and bulksolids A variety of state-of-the-art preparationand research equipment are used The current re-search topics include superconducting nanostruc-tures vortices in superconductors superconduct-ingferromagnetic hybrids and plasmonic nanoan-tennas

112 The Research Group rdquoClusters andLaser Spectroscopyrdquo

Website httpsfyskuleuvenbevsmclass

The group focuses on condensed matter down tothe atomic scale where finite size effects includingin particular quantum confinement and electroncorrelations become dominant The challenge isto understand and develop the tunability of phys-ical properties as matter is assembled from indi-vidual atoms towards bulk systems The aim isto understand and tailor the unique properties ofclusters of a few up to several 100 atoms and in-duce new properties in cluster-assembled and low-dimensional systems Research ranges from studiesof the physics and chemistry of small clusters in thegas phase using laser spectroscopy and mass spec-trometry over investigations of individual clusterson surfaces with scanning probe techniques

113 The Research Group rdquoScanningProbe Microscopyrdquo

Website httpsfyskuleuvenbevsmspm

The study of physical processes occurring at thenanometer scale has been substantially upgradedby the development of scanning probe microscopy(SPM) A whole family of scanning probe varietieshas been and is being developed providing un-precedented access with nanometer resolution tothe structural properties as well as to the nanometerscale variations of various other physical propertiesincluding the local electrical magnetic and mechan-ical behaviour The group has access to state-of-the-art SPM facilities and research topics include quan-tum confinement in metallic nanoparticles finite-size effects in patterned ferromagnets and proper-ties of carbon nanotubes and biomolecules

114 The Research Group rdquoFunctionalNanosystemsrdquo

Website httpsfyskuleuvenbevsmfunindex

The group focuses its research on advanced nano-materials and their assembly into functional de-vices and systems Advanced nanomaterials in-clude nanoparticles 2D nanostructures thin filmheterostructures and bio-hybrids They exploretheir functional response important for many ap-plications in fields like electronics materials sciencecatalysis energy production and medicine The ap-proach covers experimental and theoretical effortsas well as nanoscale up to macroscale synthesis andcharacterization Research topics include nanomate-rials (carbon nanotubes and carpets nanowires andnanoparticles) oxide-semiconductor interfaces ma-terials with metal-insulator transitions and novelfunctional materials for rechargeable batteries

12 The Institute for Nuclear andRadiation Physics (IKS)

Website httpfyskuleuvenbeiks

121 The Research Group rdquoNuclear SolidState Physicsrdquo

Website httpfyskuleuvenbeiksnvsfhome

The research is concentrated on four different do-mains magnetic nanostructures silicides and ger-manide thin films doping of semiconductors sur-faces and nanoparticles The group has access to avariety of experimental conventional and nucleartechniques The current research topics include

bull magnetic nanostructures studied for their in-teresting fundamental properties and appli-cations

bull doping semiconductors for applications in egmagnetic storage media

bull silicide and germanide thin films as essential partsof microelectronic devices and

bull surfaces and nanoparticles such the structure of(passivated) semiconductor surfaces (Si GeGaAs InGaAs ) and the growth of nanos-tructures on these surfaces as well as embed-ded nanoparticles created by ion implantation



13 The Laboratory forSemiconductor Physics

Website httpfyskuleuvenbehf

The laboratory is experimentally oriented and prin-cipally addressing semiconductorinsulator het-erostructures and amorphous materials of reduceddimensions The main focus is on interfacial elec-trical and structural properties The approach isa combination of interface-specific experimentalmethods sensitive to local atomic structure andmethods to probe both the extended and localizedspectrum of electron states The experimental tech-niques used are Electron Paramagnetic Resonance(EPR) which is virtually the sole method of iden-tification of point defects at the atomic scale In-ternal Photoemission Spectroscopy (IPS) for thedetermination of band diagrams of semiconduc-torinsulator structures and Inelastic Electron Tun-nelling Spectroscopy (lETS) for interface characteri-zation at a length scale below 2 nm

14 The Institute for TheoreticalPhysics

Website httpitffyskuleuvenbe

141 The Research Grouprdquo Interfaces andWettingrdquo

Website httpitffyskuleuvenbesimjoi

The main areas of research interest are wettingtransitions novel fractal structures topological-dependent interactions and biased percolation onscale-free networks The wetting phase transitionis illustrated through its occurrence in a variety ofcondensed matter systems ranging from classicalfluids to superconductors and Bose-Einstein con-densates Currently special attention is devoted toi) the study of physical and interdisciplinary appli-cations of novel fractal structures including hierar-chical deposition population models and bio filmstructures and ii) topology-dependent interactionsand percolation in scale-free networks includingdegree-dependent interactions

2 University of Antwerp

21 The Research Group rdquoElectronMicroscopy for MaterialsResearch rdquo(EMAT)

Website wwwuantwerpenbeenrgemat

EMAT is one of the leading electron microscopycenters in the world and has expertise in both fun-damental and applied electron microscopy Its goalis the study of (inorganic) materials by differentelectron microscopy techniques It has built up awide range of activities concerned with fundamen-tal solid state physics materials science solid statechemistry and materials characterization Withdecreasing dimensions down to the nanometerand sub-nanometer scale electron microscopy isa unique technique being able to relate structuralproperties to physical or chemical properties In-creased understanding of the basic phenomena in-volved in the interaction of electron beams withmaterials and improved computer power allow tobetter determine the local structure the local com-position and even the local electronic structure Thisis applied to a wide field of materials such as semi-conductors superconductors alloys polymers cat-alysts and small particles surface layers multilay-ers and composite materials Advanced electronmicroscopy not only involves resolution at the sub-nanometer level it also includes advanced diffrac-tion techniques for determining the local structureand analysis of the inelastic scattered electrons toobtain compositional and electronic informationEMAT has several state-of-the-art electron micro-scopes including two aberration corrected high endFEI- Titan instruments a dual beam FIB and anenvironmental SEM The following list gives themajor current research themes investigated shapememory alloys multiferroic materials ceramic thinfilms nanostructured materials carbon based mate-rials zeolites and mesoporous materials soft matterand polymers

22 The Research GrouprdquoExperimental CondensedMatter Physicsrdquo (ECM)

Website httpswwwuantwerpenbeenrgecml

The group investigates a range of topics such as



high-spin molecular compounds point defects inwide bandgap materials electro-optical and non-linear optical molecules materials for organic elec-tronics including photovoltaicrsquos carbon nanotubesand crystalline nanostructures State-of-the art in-strumentation is available for continuous wave andpulsed electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) in X-and W-bands high-sensitivity fluorescence Ramanscattering and pulsed laser experiments for time-resolved optical spectroscopy and nonlinear opticsThe main research themes are high-frequency EPRof high-spin transition metal compounds point de-fects in wide band-gap materials photographic ma-terials semiconductor nanostructures and devicesorganic electro-optic materials and organic non-linear optics

23 The Research GrouprdquoCondensed MatterTheoryrdquo(CMT)

Website httpswwwuantwerpenbeenrgcmt

The group concentrates on the theoretical studyof materials (semiconductors and superconductors)of micrometer and nanometer size Their electri-cal magnetic and optical properties are studied us-ing theoretical modeling and computer simulationsNew hybrid systems consisting of combinations ofsemiconductors and ferromagnets or superconduc-tors are investigated The goal is the increase ofthe functionality of semiconductor structures Themain research subjects are i) graphene which isa unique single layer material with extremely un-usual properties ii) superconductivity with focuson the properties of the vortex matter in variousstructures iii) colloids by employing molecular dy-namics to study properties of interacting particlesand ab initio calculations to gain insight into thenew or even hypothetical materials

24 The Research Group rdquoTheory ofQuantum Systems andComplex Systemsrdquo (TQC)

Website httpswwwuantwerpenbeenrgtheory-of-quantum-sy

The group studies systems for which quantum me-chanical behavior becomes macroscopic eg su-perconductors liquid helium atomic superfluidsand polariton superfluids Feynmanrsquos path integraltheory is the tool of choice to study their behaviorThey look for quantum behaviour in several specificareas

bull in solids investigation of mechanisms for su-perconductivity and modeling how supercon-ducting properties can be modified by nanopat-terning For example studies of collective exci-tations of electrons in plasmonics interplay oflight and metallic nanoparticles and quantumdots

bull in atomic gases superfluidity and Bose-Einsteincondensation in ultracold atomic gases bothbosonic and fermionic The adjustability of theinteratomic interaction strength the possibilityto build artificial gauge fields into the effec-tive Hamiltonians and the versatility of theconfinement geometry are used

bull in condensed light Photons in a cavity can be hy-bridized with excitons and form polaritons re-sulting in a fluid of interacting photons with asmall effective mass In the appropriate regimeof temperatures and density this also becomesa superfluid

3 University of Ghent

31 Department of Solid StateSciences

Website httpswwwugentbewesolidstatesciencesen

The department has activities in the broad field ofSolid State Sciences related to deposition and (sur-face) analysis of thin films to magnetron deposi-tion conformal coating of nanomaterials detectionand microscopic characterization of paramagneticdefects in solids by means of Electron Paramag-netic Resonance (EPR) and Electron Nuclear Dou-ble Resonance (ENDOR) It includes also the studyof defects in semiconductors i e physical proper-ties identification quantification of analytical tech-niques and the growth amp characterization of photo-and electroluminescence of sulfide phosphors Atpresent the department counts 6 research groups



311 The Research Group rdquoConformalCoating of Nanomaterialsrdquo (CoCoon)

Website httpwwwcocoonugentbe

The research of CoCoon is situated within the con-tinuing trend towards miniaturization in micro-electronics The group focuses on all levels of thinfilm devices from deposition to their different ap-plications after extensive characterization The re-search activities are concentrated on deposition ofthin films (atomic layer deposition of conformalnanocoatings and combinatorial deposition of thinfilm materials libraries) characterization of thinfilms (in situ during deposition - ex situ at syn-chrotrons) and applications of thin films (nano-electronics solar cells non-volatile memories andLi-ion batteries)

312 The Research Group rdquoDefects inSemiconductors (DISC)

Website httpswwwugentbewesolidstatesciencesenresearchgroupsdisc

The research of DISC focuses on the study of de-fects in semiconductor materials in order to explaintheir effects on electrical and optical properties ofsemiconductor devices The semiconductors stud-ied are Si Ge diamond III - V II -VI and Cu(lnGa)Se2 with applications in microelectronics optoelec-tronics and photovoltaics Defects are investigatedtrough their electronic vibrational and electronmagnetic resonance spectra The aim is to obtaininformation on the physical properties structuralidentification and quantification of defects via vari-ous electrical characterization and (quasi) spectro-scopic techniques

313 The Research Group rdquoDedicatedResearch on Advanced Films andTargetsrdquo (DRAFT)

Website httpwwwdraftugentbe

The research group DRAFT studies magnetron sput-ter deposition in general Beside the research ofindustrial interesting materials such as supercon-ductors or (photo )catalytic systems the focus is onfundamental aspects of reactive sputter depositionThe long tradition in magnetron sputtering resultedin an international status on reactive sputtering

314 The Research Group rdquoDynamics ofFunctional Nano Materials (DyNaMat)

Website httpswwwugentbewesolidstatesciencesdynamat

DyNaMatrsquos research activities cover various sub-jects in the domain of magnetism

bull Skyrmions and chiral systems ferromagnet filmscan be chiral due to the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriyanteraction (DMI) induced by symmetry break-ing at interfaces This chiral interaction is stud-ied in spin structures such as spin spirals spincycloids and skyrmions

bull Exchange bias wheen cooling a ferromag-neticantiferromagnetic bilayer in a magneticfield below the Neel temperature an unidirec-tional shift of the hysteresis loop is observedThis shift is accompanied by an enhanced co-ercivity The influence of this interface interac-tion on FMI AFM bilayers is studied

bull Artificial spin ice in some magnetic systems in-teractions result in the inability to minimize allits competing interactions called frustrationAn example of a frustrated system is water iceThe ordering of the magnetic moments in asquare lattice of magnetic islands is studied

bull Domain wall motion When the magnetizationat two ends of a nano strip are aligned anti par-allel there will be a small region in betweenwhere the magnetization turns 180 degreesThese regions are called domain walls Thegroup studies the mobility of a domain wallunder the influence of disorder thermal fluctu-ations and driving forces like magnetic fieldsand spin polarized currents

315 The Research Group rdquoElectronMagnetic Resonancerdquo (EMR)

Website httpswwwugentbewesolidstatesciencesenresearchgroupsEMR

The EMR group studies the microscopic structureof paramagnetic point defects in solids by means ofElectron Magnetic Resonance (EMR) SpectroscopyThey are known for detailed characterization ofparamagnetic centers but also for the use of high



sensitive and non-destructive techniques The re-search is focused on irradiation damage of organiccrystals transition-metal or lanthanide activatedoptical materials and semiconductors The groupuses ESR (Electron Spin Resonance) also known asEPR (Electron paramagnetic resonance) ENDOR(Electron Nuclear Double Resonance) and EI-EPR(ENDOR-induced EPR)

316 The Research Grouprdquo LuminescentMaterialsrdquo (LumiLab)

Website httpwwwlumilabugentbe

The LumiLab group brings together various do-mains of light research

bull LED phosphors mainly binary and ternarysulfides for wavelength conversion in whiteLEDs

bull persistent luminescence glow-in-the-dark ma-terials and their perceived brightness

bull non-aqueous sol-gel synthesis and protectionof particles by coating solvothermal synthesis

bull X-ray absorption spectroscopy as a tool to in-vestigate rare earth ions in host crystals and

bull photocatalysis for fast removal of volatile or-ganic molecules and air purification

Various facilities are available such as fluores-cence spectrophotometry absorption spectroscopydecay measurements ellipsometry X-ray diffrac-tion and scanning electron microscopy

32 The Research Division rdquoNuclearMaterials Physics rdquo(NUMAT)

Website httpwwwnumatugentbe

The division is dedicated to the study of funda-mental and technological properties of materialsby means of experimental methods which use nu-clear radiations or the interactions of the nucleiwith electromagnetic fields They concentrate onMossbauer spectroscopy and positron annihilationspectroscopy Mossbauer spectroscopy can be per-formed only on a limited number of isotopes ofwhich the most important is 57Fe Therefore the re-search is mainly on iron-containing materials such

as magnetic oxides nanomaterials thin films iron-nickel meteorites minerals clays high pressuresynthesized minerals Fe-bearing precursors for car-bon nanotubes In the field of positron annihilationthe interest is mainly in defects in metals and alloysand the many aspects of the behavior of positron-ium in insulating materials

4 University of Hasselt TheInstitute for MaterialResearch (IMO)

Website httpswwwuhasseltbeIUHIMOAbout-IMO-IMOMEC

The Institute is a research centre with a vast knowl-edge in the field of materials science It has an inten-sive collaboration with IMOMEC the department ofIMEC at the university campus While most of themore fundamental research is carried out at IMOthe largest part of applied research and projectsin collaboration with industry are concentratedwithin IMOMEC Within IMO Physics MaterialsResearch is conducted in a number of subgroupsWebsite httpswwwuhasseltbeIUHIMOVisit-the-groups

41 The Research Group rdquoEnergyMaterials and Interfacesrdquo(EMINT)

This group aims to gain mechanistic insight intoreactions of materials and interfaces Research fo-cuses on electrochemical interfaces in particularrelated to positive electrodes of Li-Ion Batteries butalso on electrodeposition and corrosion Chemi-cal and electrochemical reactions take place on themolecular or atomic scale requiring high-resolutiontechniques to gain deeper understanding Nextto common laboratory-based techniques and othermore advanced structural methods such as AtomProbe Tomography the group further employs in-situ X-ray diffraction using synchrotron light



42 The Research GrouprdquoEngineering Materials ampApplicationsrdquo (EMAP)

The group is active in electronics and electro-mechanics The applied research is situated withinthree domains In the domain of Biomedical DeviceEngineering the research focuses on the develop-ment of dedicated measuring platforms that canprocess the signals of sensors and thermal or opti-cal based biosensors into a fully functional point-of-care system In the domain of Energy Systems En-gineering the research is concentrated on materialsfor photovoltaics and batteries The primary inter-est lies in the reliability of the components In thedomain of Functional Materials Manufacturingdifferent printing and coating processes are usedsuch as inkjet printing screen printing or spraycoating onto different substrates

43 The Research GrouprdquoPhotonics and Quantum Labrdquo(PQL)

This group addresses cross disciplinary scientifictopics of photonics optical device physics and biol-ogy It uses nanofabrication tools to fabricate semi-conducting and quantum physics based deviceswhich are used to probe and image semiconductingand biological systems at the nanoscale

44 The Research GrouprdquoFunctional MaterialsEngineeringrdquo (FME)

The FME group investigates printing and coatingtechniques of functional materials on different sub-strates The focus is threefold i) Investigation to-wards the printability of functional materials or-ganic materials and scratch and wear resistant ma-terials ii) Deposition of these materials on differentsubstrates (glass foil paper textiles) using print-ing and coating techniques The properties aredetermined using characterization techniques foropto-electronic thermal and mechanical investiga-tions iii) Application of the functional materialsand upscaling towards use in organic electronics(solar cells light emitting devices )

45 The Research GrouprdquoNanostructure Physicsrdquo (NSP)

The NSP group focuses its research on fundamen-tal topics in nanometer-scale science and technol-ogy with emphasis on new materials (mainly metalparticles and organicinorganic hybrid structures)The main goal is the understanding of physicaland chemical properties related to the reduced di-mensions of nanostructured materials includingelectronic amp atomic (molecular) structure chargetransport optical magnetic and thermodynamicproperties and chemical reactivity

46 The Research Group rdquoDesignand Synthesis of OrganicSemiconductorsrdquo (DSOS)

Research is focused on the design synthesisand characterization of small organic moleculesoligomers and polymers for application in plas-tic and advanced healthcare Besides the study ofnovel synthetic methods modifications of existingpolymerization pathways are developed Attentionis paid to the development of new materials fun-damentals and concepts in organic semiconductortechnology A broad pallet of advanced electronicmaterials is available for further studies in deviceseg light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) organic photovoltaic de-vices (OPVs) organic photodetectors (OPDs) andchemo- or biosensors

47 The Research Group rdquoWideBandgap Materialsrdquo (WBGM)

The group is active in the field of wide bandgapmaterials with emphasis on the deposition and char-acterization of CVD diamond films The propertiesof novel materials like hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) nanowalls and thin piezoelectric aluminiumnitride (AIN) layers are also investigated Recentlythe emphasis is on the use and functionalization ofnanodiamond particles and film surfaces with smallmolecules Besides fundamental research like thenucleation and doping of diamond the materialsare used in structures like solar-blind UV detec-tors or acoustic wave sensors based on heterostruc-tures of nano- and microcrystalline diamond withpiezoelectric materials like AIN



48 The Research Group rdquoOrganicOpto-Electronicsrdquo (OOE)

The OOE group aims to understand fundamentalopto-electronic processes in organic and molecu-lar semiconductors and exploit them for organicelectronic applications with a main focus on pho-tovoltaics Charge carrier generation and recombi-nation in these materials are dictated by the prop-erties of excited electronic states at organic donor-acceptor interfaces such as excitons and chargetransfer states They search for structure-propertyrelations guiding the synthesis of new materialswith improved performance in devices such as solarcells photo-detectors and light emitting diodes

49 The Research Group rdquoElectricaland Physical Characterization(ELPHYC)

The group is active in the characterization of mate-rials systems and microelectronic components us-ing high resolution in-situ measurement techniquesActivities involve analytical amp electrical character-ization of materials systems andor experimentalsensor devices The focus is on the development ofelectronic interfaces for biosensors and the devel-opment of reliability equipment for solar cells andmodules The group also acts as a major servicecenter towards industry with services from laser op-tics to biomedical devices and from raw materialsto solar panels or high speed processors

5 University of Brussels(VUB) The Research GrouprdquoApplied Physicsrdquo(APHY)

Website httpwevubacbeaphy

The Applied Physics group is a multidisciplinarygroup of researchers from the Departments ofPhysics and of Applied Physics amp Photonics Theyuse experimental and theoretical methods to ad-dress fundamental challenges in biological physicscondensed matter physics electromagnetism laserphysics and photonics The main research themesare the study of metamaterials and nanophotonicsbio-inspired approaches to machine learning the

dynamics of semiconductor lasers non-equilibriumpattern formation and solitons dynamics The fol-lowing research lines can be distinguished

bull Dynamics of semiconductor lasers Nonlinear dy-namics bifurcation theory and stochastic pro-cesses are used in lasers in particular semi-conductor lasers This theoretical study allowsinvestigating the dynamic behavior of semi-conductor lasers These theoretical predictionsare tested experimentally

bull Coherent properties of lasers Research of meth-ods to modify and control the spatial coher-ence in order to generate spatially incoherentemission of a laser source The objective is tounderstand model optimize and apply thisunique emission regime in innovative applica-tions

bull Metamaterials Study of complex structuresthat are composed of small resonant electriccircuits These building blocks are smaller thanthe wavelength of light The problems stud-ied range from the simulation of elementarymetamaterial building blocks over photonicdevices to the development of meta material-based systems

bull Dissipative solitons Study of structures thatarise in extended spatial systems in natureboth patterns as well as localized structuresInvestigation of the dynamic behavior of soli-tons study of the fundamental principles andunraveling the underlying bifurcation struc-ture

bull Coupled networks with delay With such systemssynchronization may occur in which the oscil-lators vibrate with the same frequency andorphase The systems have universal data pro-cessing properties (reservoir computing or liq-uid state machines) that are investigated

bull Nonlinear oscillators with delay Those delay sys-tems have universal information processingproperties With a single non-linear node onecan achieve the same computational perfor-mance as with a neural network The investiga-tions are related to the information processingcapacity and the computational properties



6 Universite Catholique deLouvain The rdquoInstitute ofCondensed Matter andNanosciencerdquo (IMCN)

Website httpsuclouvainbeenresearch-institutesimcnresearch-divisionshtml

Research is focused on condensed matter andnanoscience from the atomic and molecular levels toreal materials The research concerns the synthesisdesign manipulation implementation and model-ing of (bio-) molecules (bio-) surfaces and solidmaterials The compounds materials or devicesare investigated for their functions properties orreactivity leading up to applications The instituteconsists of three research divisions (BSMA MOSTNAPS) The divisions and research groups relatedto condensed matter physics and semiconductorsare briefly described hereunder

61 Research Division rdquoBio-andSoft Matterrdquo (BSMA)

Website httpsuclouvainbeenresearch-institutesimcnbsma

611 Functional Nanomaterials andNanodevices

Website httpsuclouvainbeenresearch-institutesimcnbsmafunctional-nanomaterials-andnanodevices html

The ability to selectively arrange nanosized do-mains of inorganic andor organic materials intohybrid nanomaterials offers an attractive route toengineer new nanostructured materials that can beused in (spin) electronics energy memory and mi-crowave devices catalysis sensor and bio-medicalThe BSMA division has expertise in the develop-ment of synthesis methods (nano imprinting elec-tro deposition in nano porous templates thin-filmdeposition nano assembly) to control the composi-tion and shape of such hybrid nanostructures

612 Functional Hybrid Multi SegmentedNanotubes and Nanowires

The membrane-template method is combined withlayer-by-layer (LbL) assembly andor electrodepo-sition to sequentially synthesize multi segmentednanostructures composed of metals polymers syn-thetic and biological poly electrolytes and col-loids The electrochemical approach controls thearchitectural parameters of the resulting structureswhereas the LbL adsorption technique permits tointegrate non conducting materials

613 Hybrid materials for PotentialThermoelectric Applications

Thermoelectric materials are interesting due to theirability to convert energy for cooling (Peltier effect)and electric power generation (Seebeck effect) Theperformance of thermoelectric materials dependson the dimensionless figure of merit including thetemperature athe Seebeck coefficient the electricalresistivity and the thermal conductivity

614 Hybrid Systems for EM Absorptionand Metamaterial Properties

Wireless communication via electromagnetic trans-mission in the microwave range has become ubiq-uitous In parallel electronic devices are becomingmore compact These trends generate a growingissue with electromagnetic interference with con-sequences ranging from annoying to dangerousClassical EM radiation is shielded by Faraday cageswhich reflect the signal By contrast EM absorbersare more attractive because they truly eliminate thebothersome EM wav

615 Ferromagnetic Nanowire Substratesfor RF Electronics

Ferromagnetic nanowires embedded into poroustemplates are an interesting alternative route toferrite-based materials Over the last decade thegroups at UCL have successfully prepared a varietyof ferromagnetic nanowire substrates to design var-ious prototypes of microwave devices such as orcirculators isolators and phase shifters useful forwireless communication and automotive systems



616 Nanomagnetism in NanoparticleArrays

Arrays of magnetic nanowires and nanotubes em-bedded in non-magnetic dielectric templates are ofconsiderable interest for fundamental studies andfor their exploitations in applications such as pat-terned media for magnetic storage microwave andspintronics devices Control and tuning of theirmagnetic properties requires further understandingof the interplay between intrinsic and shape effectsas well as interaction among individual nanostruc-tures Magneto elastic effects provide an additionalparameter to control the magnetic properties be-cause of the large surface area between nanowiresand host matrix

617 Spintronics in Magnetic Nanowires

The template-based strategy has been successfullydeveloped to fabricate arrays of magnetic multilay-ered nanowires The nanowires system has pro-vided an important opportunity in exploring giantmagnetoresistance effects in the current perpendic-ular to the planes geometry and in testing theo-retical models in various limits Extensive giantmagnetoresistance measurements were performedon various nanometer-scale multilayer structuressuch as ColCu and NiFeCu nanowires

618 Template Free Electro Deposition ofNano Rod Arrays and Devices

The fabrication and characterization of ZnOnanowires is the subject of intensive research indue to their potential applications in highly inte-grated nanoscale electronic and optoelectronic cir-cuits with improved performance for solid-state dis-play devices sensors solar cells energy harvestingdevices switchable hydrophobic surfaces

62 Research Division rdquoNanoscopicPhysicsrdquo (NAPS)

Website httpsuclouvainbeenresearch-institutesimcnnaps

At the nanoscale quantum mechanics plays a promi-nent role both for experimental investigations andtheoretical simulations The researchers in NAPSexplore various aspects of this world from atoms

photons and ions to nanoscale devices throughthe crystalline state and molecules The followingtopics are studied

621 Spectroscopy and Optics

The expertise in applied optics comes from the de-velopment of laser techniques for fundamental re-search in atomic physics Progressively this activityhas focused on questions driven by industrial ap-plications Today the activities are grouped in fourresearch topics

bull Optical properties of bio-inspired nanostruc-tures

bull Optical characterization coherence tomogra-phy electro-optic sampling deflectometry

bull Laser generation of fast ions

bull First-principles study of optical functional ma-terials

622 Light-matter Interaction

The following activities are related to condensedmatter physics and magnetism

bull Development of algorithms for numerical res-olution of Schroumldinger equation

bull Attosecond control of magnetism with an ultrashort electromagnetic pulse at the atomic scale

bull Study of interaction of atoms with super in-tense field of low frequency


623 Numerical simulation at thenanoscale


bull First-principles study of optical functional ma-terials materials for nanoelectronics carbon-based nanostructures

bull Ab initio quantum transport in nanostructures

bull STM imaging experiments and ab initio mod-eling



624 Electronic transport at the nanoscale

The research activities are focused on transportproperties imaging



bull Imaging electronic transport at the nanoscale

bull Quantum transport in low-dimensional sys-tems

7 University of Liege

71 The Pole rdquoSoft Matter andComplex Systemsrdquo

Website httpwwwfacsculgacbecmsc_950347pole-de-recherches-matiere-molle

The pole deals with the interactions between largenumbers of microscopic entities which give rise tocollective macroscopic phenomena Experimentaland numerical studies cover complex fluids non-linear systems biophysics and statistical physicsStatistical physics creates a link between those mi-croscopic features and the non-trivial macroscopicbehaviors Soft matter refers to structured liq-uids colloids biological membranes polymersgels foams grains and active materials The groupis equipped with instruments for microfluidics rhe-ology imaging laser spectroscopy

711 The Research Group for rdquoResearchand Applications in StatisticalPhysicsrdquo (GRASP)

Website httpgrasp-laborg

The research projects are dedicated to the study ofnanoparticles suspensions monolayers biosensorsself-assembling systems powders colloids gran-ular systems droplets antibubbles microfluidicssoap films emulsions foams complex fluids activematter rheology chaos and non-linear phenomena

72 The laboratory rdquoPhysics ofFunctional MaterialsNanostructures and BiologicalSystemsrdquo (FunMat)

Website httpwwwfacsculgacbecmsc_950345pole-de-recherches-materiaux

The FunMat laboratory performs research in thefield of functional materials in particular semi-conductors thermoelectrics ferroelectrics piezo-electrics multiferroics superconductors and bio-logical systems The objective is to understand thebehavior of matter at the atomic molecular andmesoscopic length scales The unit is structured infive complementary subgroups with theoretical andexperimental competencies i) physics of materialsand nanostructures ii) theoretical materials physicsiii) biomedical spectroscopy iv) physics of solidsinterfaces and nanostructures and v) experimentalphysics ofnanostructured materials

721 The Research Group rdquoPhysics ofMaterials and Nanostructures(Nanomat)

Website httpwwwnanomatulgacbe

The Nanomat group investigates the electronic andvibration properties of materials for energy applica-tions and novel generation electronics The researchactivities are concentrated on - Thermoelectricsmaterials which couple differences in temperatureand electrical voltage Applying a heat source toone side of a sample will induce a voltage across itor conversely by applying a voltage the sample canbe used to cool one side or heat the other (solid staterefrigeratorsheaters with no compressors or mov-ing parts) The challenge is to understand the pro-cesses and to find materials which will allow theseprinciples to be scaled up to industrially useful de-vices - Phonons and electron-phonon couplingby inducing a deformation of the atomic structurethe coupling between electrons and phonons givesrise to interesting phenomena such as supercon-ductivity normal resistivity thermal resistance orthe Seebeck effect Using ab initio tools one cancalculate phonons and electron-phonon coupling togood precision - Attosecond dynamics of electronsand molecules poses serious challenges to both ex-periment and theory The challenge is to come up



with a unifying picture to understand the multi-ple configurations and trajectories of the density ofelectrons and especially to predict trajectories

722 The Research Group rdquoTheoreticalMaterial Physicsrdquo (TheMa)

Website httpwwwphythemaulgacbe

The group is specialized in the first-principles mod-eling of multifunctional materials This includesregular dielectrics ferroelectrics piezoelectricsmagneto-electric multiferroics thermoelectrics aswell as materials for non-linear optical applica-tions Recent works concerned the understand-ing of the evolution of the properties in varioustypes of nanostructures (ultra-thin films superlat-tices nanowires or nanoparticles) and the design ofartificial nanostructures with new and optimizedproperties

723 The Research Group rdquoSolid StatePhysics Interfaces andNanostructuresrdquo (SPIN)

Website httpwwwspinulgacbe

The research activities of SPIN are dedicated tothe study of the electrical and optical propertiesof semiconducting materials and systems with aparticular interest in crystalline ultra-thin films andengineered nanostructures The objective is focusedon the consequences related to intentional or non-intentional atomic-scale variations of structure com-position in terms of the impact on the electricalactivity the crystalline quality of the depositednanostructures and of their interfaces Experimen-tal techniques used are admittance spectroscopytransient photoconductivity absorption and photo-luminescence

724 The Research Group rdquoExperimentalPhysics of Nanostructured Materialsrdquo(EPNM)

Website httpwwwmateulgacbe

The research of EPNM is devoted to the investiga-tion of confinement effects in mesoscopic systemsincluding nanomagnets structured superconduc-tors plasmonics and hybrid heterostructures with

the aim of unveiling new phenomena that are notpresent in large size systems The main idea behindstructuring materials down to dimensions match-ing the characteristic sizes determining the physicsof the elementary blocks (ie electrons in metalsphotons in dielectric media plasmons at metallicinterfaces or fluxons in superconductors) is thatboundary conditions surface effects and interfacesbecome more relevant and lead to pronounced mod-ifications of the general response of the system Thegroup is particularly interested in hybrid systemswhere the interplay of different physical mecha-nisms can lead to entirely new phenomena

8 University of Brussels(ULB)

81 The rdquoLaboratoire drsquolnformationQuantiquerdquo (LIQ)

Website httpliqulbacbeindexphpoption=com_contentampview=articleampid=2ampItemid=2

Manipulating information at the quantum levelis different from manipulating it classically Thisopens the door to some new and surprising appli-cations such as quantum cryptography or quantumcomputers LIQ is actively working on differentaspects of quantum information

bull Theoretical work dealing with many aspectsof quantum information including quantumstate estimation quantum cloning quantumnon-locality and communication complexityquantum cryptography and quantum cointossing

bull The experimental quantum computing includesthe realization of an all fiber demonstration ofalgorithms an all fiber demonstration of errorfiltration for quantum communication Presentwork is focusing on the development of novelsources of entangled photons both in fiber andin silicon waveguides

82 The Research Group rdquoOptiqueNonlinealre Theoriquerdquo (ONT)

Website httpwwwulbacbesciencesont



The main field of application of the research donein the ONT group is optics One of their speci-ficities is the pursuit of analytical results notablythrough asymptotic methods They are also ac-tive in building mathematical models for opticalsystems Current research themes are quantumdotsdashes and their application in optoelectron-ics semiconductor lasers laser mode locking mod-eling and stability transverse nonlinear effects op-tical structures in space or time localized states anddissipative solitons negative refraction index mate-rials micro-structured optical fibers nonlinear me-dia and Bragg gratings plasmons nonlinear opticsin micro-cavities with whispering gallery modesand solar cells

83 The Research Group rdquoPhysicsof Complex Systems andStatistical Mechanicsrdquo

Website httpcomplexulbacbe

The research activities aim at understandingcomplex phenomena on the basis of mathemat-ical descriptions The following research ac-tivities are distinguished fundamental aspectsof complex systems non-equilibrium thermody-namics and stochastic processes non-equilibriumstatistical mechanics classical transport frommicro- to macro scale complex quantum sys-tems out-of-equilibrium nanosystems in-and out-of-equilibrium surfaces and multistep nucleationtheory

9 University of Namur

91 The Namur Institute ofStructured Matter (NISM)

Website httpsdirectoryunamurbeentitiesnism_LOCALE_=en

The research interests cover various topics in thefield of organic and physical chemistry materialschemistry surface science solid-state chemistry andphysics from both a theoretical and experimentalpoint of view It enables the exchange of ideas andcompetences in the field of synthesis and function-alization of molecular systems and novel materials

(OD ID 2D and 3D) the rational design of solidswith specific architecture and surface properties aswell as the development of advanced techniquesfor the study of their physicochemical propertiesAn important role is played by the theoretical ap-proaches through numerical simulation and mod-eling The following topics are studied

911 Nonlinear Optics and Photonics

Research is carried out in nonlinear optics (NLO)quantum NLO plasmonics and photonics appliedto multiscale structured matter (ie molecules sur-faces biomaterials nanomaterials metamaterialsand crystals) Optical responses and their couplingto vibration and electronic excitations are predictedfrom theoretical models using numerical simula-tions and measured using dedicated experimentalsetups

912 High Performance Computing (HPC)Multiscale Modeling

The HPC pole aims at 1) sharing computationaltechniques skills and tools in order to develop newmaterials and predict their final properties and 2)improving the modelling techniques and computercodes to account for most of the chemistry andphysics of structured matter

913 Functional Structured Materials

The expertise is divided in two areas

bull The development of 3D porous architecturesincluding hierarchical organizations MOF orMOF-like systems organicinorganic hybridsboth using silica and carbon- based mediananocomposites etc

bull The functionalization of nanostructures suchas carbon nanotubes fullerenes (C60) pillar-arenes etc The applications cover varioustopics including Li-batteries C02 conversionbiomass conversion photosynthesis (photo)catalysis inhibition of viral andor bacterialpathogens biomaterials sensors

914 Surfaces Interfaces and CarbonNanostructures

Synthesis characterization and modeling of novelmaterials with particular attention to interfaces



and to low-dimensional structures including carbonnanostructures (graphene nanotubes) A choice ofdeposition and characterization methods is avail-able A theoretical support is provided to under-stand 2D materials synthesis and growth and tointerpret experimental data

92 The Research Center rdquoPhysicsof Matter and Radiation (PMR)rdquo

Website httppmrunamurbefr

The researchers of the Department of Physics ofthe UNamur of are grouped under the banner Re-search Centre in Physics of Matter and Radiation(PMR) The research themes of the department dealwith the interaction between matter and radiationfor instance being linked to progress in materialsbut also to developments in laser spectroscopy the-oretical calculations and life sciences Concerningnew materials PMR has developed a great exper-tise in the field of all types of thin film deposition(metallic semiconductor oxides polymers andbiomolecules) by different physic-chemical tech-niques sputtering evaporation epitaxy by molecu-lar beam or low-pressure cold plasma These newmaterials are very often nanomaterials with dom-inant or quantic interface effects because of thenanometric scale of created objects These effectsgive unique properties to materials For examplethese nanomaterials are nanoparticles (functional-ized carbon nanotubes nanocomposites combiningtwo types of nanoparticles (carbon nanotubes andmetal) and bioinspired materials

93 The Research Group rdquoCarbonNanostructuresrdquo (Carbonnage)

Website httpwwwunamurbeensci carbon-nage

The group is active in the field of carbon nanostruc-tures (graphene nanotubes graphite diamond-likecarbon etc) which are studied both experimentallyand theoretically

bull Experimentally the synthesis functionalizationand characterization of carbon nanostructuresnanotubes and graphene) is studied A partof this research is dedicated to the synthe-sis of vertically aligned nanotubes on planar

substrates the other part is the synthesis ofgraphene by various techniques The chemi-cal modification of nano carbon materials isachieved either by functionalization or post-synthesis doping using different techniquesThe characterization of samples is realized bya variety of equipment

bull Theoretically support is provided either tounderstand graphene synthesis and growthmechanisms or for the interpretation of exper-imental data Electronic structure calculationsare performed with both ab initio approachesand semi-empirical techniques The quantumchemical design of carbon nanostructures re-lated to graphene called nanographenes isstudied for their remarkable optical properties

94 The Namur Center for ComplexSystems (naXys)

Website httpwwwnaxysbe

Complex systems are composed of interactingpartsagents whose local behavior resulting fromthe interactions cannot provide a complete under-standing of the global behavior Several levels of de-scriptionmodeling of the system should be presentat the same time micro-meso-macro This forcescomplex systems to be studied by trans disciplinaryteams able to understand the whole constructionand critically analyze the connections among thedescription levels This property is the result of alarge number of elementary constituents and of thenon-linearity of the interactions between them

10 University of Mons

101 The Research Group rdquoMicro-and Nanophotonic Materialsrdquo

Website wwwumonsacbenanophot

Through numerical simulations and (semi- )ana-lytical methods the group examines the behaviorof light in structures with (sub- )wavelength scaleelements The following research subjects are con-sidered



bull Plasmonics studying the coupling betweenlight and free electrons in a metal They devel-oped a novel angle-optimized plasmonic struc-ture demonstrating better theoretical proper-ties than ITO The plasmonics research aimsto develop novel nanostructures for detectorsoptoelectronics or photovoltaics

bull Graphene The main goal of their grapheneresearch is to understand the interactions be-tween light and graphene taking in account itsstructural and doping defects and designingoriginal optoelectronic applications

bull Parity time symmetry The similarity betweenthe equations of quantum mechanics and op-tics allows micro- and nano-photonics to testof new non hermitic Hamiltonians The goalof the research is to adapt or create photonicsstructures

102 The Research Institute forMaterials Science andEngineering

Website httpportailumonsacbeEN2infossurintranetmateriauxPagesdefaultaspx

The institute combines the activities from three re-search centers the Centre of Innovation and Re-search in Materials amp Polymers (CIRMAP) the Re-search Centre of Material Engineering (CRlM) andthe Research Centre In Material Physics (CRPM seeLPSI)CIRMAP studies the morphological electronicoptical and transport properties of organic(semi)conducting materials in thin films They de-termine the chemical nature the structure andthe electronic properties of organicorganic andorganicinorganic interfaces CRlM studies metalsand metal alloys the electrochemistry of functionalceramics glasses and cements heterogeneous catal-ysis and absorbents geo materials structures andconstruction materials For this survey we consideronly the activities of LPS

1021 The rdquoLaboratory of Physics ofSurfaces and Interfaces (LPSI)rdquo

Website httpportailumonsacbeen2universitefacultesfsservicesinstitut_physique

physique_surfaces_interfacespagesdefaultaspx

The goal of LPSI is to understand how the interfa-cial characteristics of materials affect their functionand performance and hence determine their tech-nological importance The following subjects arestudied

bull Surface treatments Minute compositionalchanges can drastically modify the energeticsand dynamics of interfaces Interface sciencecan therefore be a very efficient way of opti-mizing materials in particular in areas such asmicrofluidics where surface effects dominate

bull Surface and interface characterization Researchis concentrated on wet ability coating dryingfriction and wear lubrication adhesion and ad-hesives optical properties Modern techniquesare combined to explore material properties atvarious length scales

bull Molecular modeling Studies are based on thethree complementary techniques of molecu-lar dynamics Monte-Carlo simulations andgenetic algorithms Specific modules addresscollective properties such as viscosity surfacetension and static and dynamic contact angles

11 ConclusionsCondensed matter physics including semiconduc-tors broadened its scope toward material scienceand chemistry The last thirty years the researchhas been impressive by its permanent renewaland it regularly produces major conceptual break-throughs eg mesoscopic and nanostructured ma-terials carbon-based materials magnetic materialstopological materials dielectric and ferroic oxidesmultiferroics new superconductors structures forquantum computation etc The importance is sup-ported by the variety of experimental tools avail-able eg scanning probe microscopy enhanced syn-chrotron and neutron spectroscopy new electronmicroscopes free electron lasers etc Intelligent useof better performing computers produced a revolu-tion in theoryDuring the past years university laboratories in Bel-gium have contributed substantially to state-of-the-art scientific achievements This involved researchexploiting the expertise in theory and experiment



and via active collaborative programs sharing thisexpertise amongst various groups

Leuven February 2018


BΦ ADVERTISEMENTSSPONSORS


BΦ CONTENT

Editorial 2News 3BPS Scientific Meeting 2018 3BPS Best Master Thesis Awards 2018 3Featured Articles 5Research Activities in Astronomy and Astrophysics in Belgium(Y Fremat et al)

5

Research Activities in Plasma Physics in Belgium (R Weynants) 20Research Activities in Computational Physics in Belgium (XGonze amp G Rignanese)

25

Research Activities in Hard Condensed Matter and Semicon-ductor Physics in Belgium (E Janssens amp Y Bruynseraede)

35

Sponsors 51

BΦ - Belgian Physical Society MagazineEditor in ChiefFabrice Louche

Lay-outFabrice Louche Sabine Van Doorslaere

Belgische Natuurkunde VerenigingSocieacuteteacute Belge de Physique

vzwasblPresident

Jef Ongena

Vice-President Gilles De LentdeckerSecretary Jean-Claude Jodogne

Adjunct Secretary Fabrice LoucheAccountant Yves Caudano

Board Members Bart Cleuren Michele Coeck Evelyne Daubieacute Karen Feyen Ewald Janssens Raymond Koch Peter Schlagheck Niels SchoonJacques Tempere Michael Tytgat Xavier Urbain Lisanne Van Puyvelde Michel Voueacute Roger Weynants


BΦ EDITORIAL











BΦ NEWS



Programme



















BΦ NEWS











































































2 Space missions

21 Belgian missions































vestigation








































desirehtml






35httpbrasssdforg36










38httpepncbomabe








6 Cosmology


























































863_enhtml






[7] httpwwwsidcbe


























































































































physicsmandate

[2] wwwipnasulgacbe







[9] wwwabinitorg




[13] wwwspinulgacbe

[14] wwwtcpulgacbe
















[28] wwwnaxysbe







[35] wwwaeronomiebe



[38] wwwvkiacbe









[47] wwwvscentrumbe






[53] wwwceci-hpcbe








[61] httpw3iiheacbe


[63] wwwprace-rieu










[71] wwwbelnetbe

[72] wwwbegridbe








































































































































































































































































































BΦ EDITORIAL











BΦ NEWS



Programme



















BΦ NEWS











































































2 Space missions

21 Belgian missions































vestigation








































desirehtml






35httpbrasssdforg36










38httpepncbomabe








6 Cosmology


























































863_enhtml






[7] httpwwwsidcbe


























































































































physicsmandate

[2] wwwipnasulgacbe







[9] wwwabinitorg




[13] wwwspinulgacbe

[14] wwwtcpulgacbe
















[28] wwwnaxysbe







[35] wwwaeronomiebe



[38] wwwvkiacbe









[47] wwwvscentrumbe






[53] wwwceci-hpcbe








[61] httpw3iiheacbe


[63] wwwprace-rieu










[71] wwwbelnetbe

[72] wwwbegridbe








































































































































































































































































































BΦ NEWS



Programme



















BΦ NEWS











































































2 Space missions

21 Belgian missions































vestigation








































desirehtml






35httpbrasssdforg36










38httpepncbomabe








6 Cosmology


























































863_enhtml






[7] httpwwwsidcbe


























































































































physicsmandate

[2] wwwipnasulgacbe







[9] wwwabinitorg




[13] wwwspinulgacbe

[14] wwwtcpulgacbe
















[28] wwwnaxysbe







[35] wwwaeronomiebe



[38] wwwvkiacbe









[47] wwwvscentrumbe






[53] wwwceci-hpcbe








[61] httpw3iiheacbe


[63] wwwprace-rieu










[71] wwwbelnetbe

[72] wwwbegridbe








































































































































































































































































































BΦ NEWS











































































2 Space missions

21 Belgian missions































vestigation








































desirehtml






35httpbrasssdforg36










38httpepncbomabe








6 Cosmology


























































863_enhtml






[7] httpwwwsidcbe


























































































































physicsmandate

[2] wwwipnasulgacbe







[9] wwwabinitorg




[13] wwwspinulgacbe

[14] wwwtcpulgacbe
















[28] wwwnaxysbe







[35] wwwaeronomiebe



[38] wwwvkiacbe









[47] wwwvscentrumbe






[53] wwwceci-hpcbe








[61] httpw3iiheacbe


[63] wwwprace-rieu










[71] wwwbelnetbe

[72] wwwbegridbe




































































































































































































































































































































































2 Space missions

21 Belgian missions































vestigation








































desirehtml






35httpbrasssdforg36










38httpepncbomabe








6 Cosmology


























































863_enhtml






[7] httpwwwsidcbe


























































































































physicsmandate

[2] wwwipnasulgacbe







[9] wwwabinitorg




[13] wwwspinulgacbe

[14] wwwtcpulgacbe
















[28] wwwnaxysbe







[35] wwwaeronomiebe



[38] wwwvkiacbe









[47] wwwvscentrumbe






[53] wwwceci-hpcbe








[61] httpw3iiheacbe


[63] wwwprace-rieu










[71] wwwbelnetbe

[72] wwwbegridbe





























































































































































































































































































































vestigation








































desirehtml






35httpbrasssdforg36










38httpepncbomabe








6 Cosmology


























































863_enhtml






[7] httpwwwsidcbe


























































































































physicsmandate

[2] wwwipnasulgacbe







[9] wwwabinitorg




[13] wwwspinulgacbe

[14] wwwtcpulgacbe
















[28] wwwnaxysbe







[35] wwwaeronomiebe



[38] wwwvkiacbe









[47] wwwvscentrumbe






[53] wwwceci-hpcbe








[61] httpw3iiheacbe


[63] wwwprace-rieu










[71] wwwbelnetbe

[72] wwwbegridbe









































































































































































































































































































































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35httpbrasssdforg36










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6 Cosmology


























































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[7] httpwwwsidcbe


























































































































physicsmandate

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[9] wwwabinitorg




[13] wwwspinulgacbe

[14] wwwtcpulgacbe
















[28] wwwnaxysbe







[35] wwwaeronomiebe



[38] wwwvkiacbe









[47] wwwvscentrumbe






[53] wwwceci-hpcbe








[61] httpw3iiheacbe


[63] wwwprace-rieu










[71] wwwbelnetbe

[72] wwwbegridbe












































































































































































































































































































35httpbrasssdforg36










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6 Cosmology


























































863_enhtml






[7] httpwwwsidcbe


























































































































physicsmandate

[2] wwwipnasulgacbe







[9] wwwabinitorg




[13] wwwspinulgacbe

[14] wwwtcpulgacbe
















[28] wwwnaxysbe







[35] wwwaeronomiebe



[38] wwwvkiacbe









[47] wwwvscentrumbe






[53] wwwceci-hpcbe








[61] httpw3iiheacbe


[63] wwwprace-rieu










[71] wwwbelnetbe

[72] wwwbegridbe












































































































































































































































































































38httpepncbomabe








6 Cosmology


























































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[7] httpwwwsidcbe


























































































































physicsmandate

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[9] wwwabinitorg




[13] wwwspinulgacbe

[14] wwwtcpulgacbe
















[28] wwwnaxysbe







[35] wwwaeronomiebe



[38] wwwvkiacbe









[47] wwwvscentrumbe






[53] wwwceci-hpcbe








[61] httpw3iiheacbe


[63] wwwprace-rieu










[71] wwwbelnetbe

[72] wwwbegridbe










































































































































































































































































































6 Cosmology


























































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[7] httpwwwsidcbe


























































































































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[2] wwwipnasulgacbe







[9] wwwabinitorg




[13] wwwspinulgacbe

[14] wwwtcpulgacbe
















[28] wwwnaxysbe







[35] wwwaeronomiebe



[38] wwwvkiacbe









[47] wwwvscentrumbe






[53] wwwceci-hpcbe








[61] httpw3iiheacbe


[63] wwwprace-rieu










[71] wwwbelnetbe

[72] wwwbegridbe




























































































































































































































































































































































863_enhtml






[7] httpwwwsidcbe


























































































































physicsmandate

[2] wwwipnasulgacbe







[9] wwwabinitorg




[13] wwwspinulgacbe

[14] wwwtcpulgacbe
















[28] wwwnaxysbe







[35] wwwaeronomiebe



[38] wwwvkiacbe









[47] wwwvscentrumbe






[53] wwwceci-hpcbe








[61] httpw3iiheacbe


[63] wwwprace-rieu










[71] wwwbelnetbe

[72] wwwbegridbe












































































































































































































































































































































































































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[2] wwwipnasulgacbe







[9] wwwabinitorg




[13] wwwspinulgacbe

[14] wwwtcpulgacbe
















[28] wwwnaxysbe







[35] wwwaeronomiebe



[38] wwwvkiacbe









[47] wwwvscentrumbe






[53] wwwceci-hpcbe








[61] httpw3iiheacbe


[63] wwwprace-rieu










[71] wwwbelnetbe

[72] wwwbegridbe






















































































































































































































































































































[28] wwwnaxysbe







[35] wwwaeronomiebe



[38] wwwvkiacbe









[47] wwwvscentrumbe






[53] wwwceci-hpcbe








[61] httpw3iiheacbe


[63] wwwprace-rieu










[71] wwwbelnetbe

[72] wwwbegridbe














































































































































































































































































































[71] wwwbelnetbe

[72] wwwbegridbe








































































































































































































































































































2018 general scientific meeting of the bps: april 11th in...

Documents