The partners of the MICROKELVIN Collaboration will generate scientific and technical knowledge in one of the frontiers of science, the extreme low temperature range. This border has been steadily moving towards absolute zero temperature, thanks to the development of new physical ideas and improved techniques. The first objective of NA3 is their efficient dissemination among the partners, as a first step. Once tested and validated, these ideas and techniques should be disseminated as recommendations, publications, patents, or know-how transfer licenses.
Research at ultra low temperatures has revealed exotic phenomena such as superconductivity and superfluidity which have always aroused the interest of ordinary people. In NA3, MICROKELVIN will also disseminate its results via popular literature, public lectures, and via participation in public demonstrations and exhibitions.
A considerable amount of knowledge already exists in the field of low temperatures. Access to this information, however, faces presently several difficulties. Publications carry important technical information, but it is incomplete or hidden, because the relevant articles often have a different scientific or technical scope. The partner laboratories, with their long standing expertise and knowledge of the community, are in an excellent position to organize the scattered information in a more useful form. The information should be incorporated in a collective database, accessible not only at the level of the partners, but by the larger community.
Potential users of the scientific and technical knowledge of MICROKELVIN include nearby scientific communities, as well as nearby industrial partners. More specifically, dissemination will be organized by a Dissemination Committee, formed by the NA Leader (CNRS) and representatives of the Partners (one identified person per partner), in liaison with the Management Committee and the Project Web-officer.
The results produced by the partners will first be made available through the dedicated Intranet Web site, in order to foster internal discussion and to allow for a first evaluation. Once ready for publication, the authors will be encouraged to submit their work in journals of international level, acknowledging support by the European Community through the MICROKELVIN Collaboration. The same procedure applies to lectures, reports, or any other form of dissemination.
The results, once validated, will also be made public through the "Extranet" pages of our web-site.
The technical information presently scattered in publications, thesis manuscripts, laboratory reports, web "calculators" will be collected, evaluated, organized by subjects and key-words, and incorporated in an open data base, which will be fed in a first step by the partners, and later by a broader group of experts. This will yield "CryoTools: Tools for the users of Cryogenics; Data base-materials, good practice, instrumentation, literature guide".
The power of this method to collect and organize information has been demonstrated, in other matters, by a well-known Web-based Encyclopedia.
Notes of "best-practice" in several sensitive fields (refrigeration, thermometry, low-noise electronics...) and a public WEB-based library of low temperature experimental theses containing valuable recipes will be created and maintained up-to-date within CryoTools.
Networking with nearby scientific communities, such as air- and space, astrophysics, cold atom and laser cooling, cosmology, high energy, metrology, quantum information processing and superconductivity communities is of clear mutual interest. Although contacts exist, these are very unsatisfactory nowadays. We plan to disseminate relevant information produced by our community in the most usable form to the representative bodies of these neighboring communities (organizers of conferences and schools, scientific committees, commission members).
This task includes 4 networking activities (LT-X) that has the aim of strengthening highly competitive research communities in their low temperature frontier:
Networking with nearby industrial partners producing and/or manufacturing cryogenic liquids, ultra low temperature refrigerators, superconducting magnets, ultra sensitive sensors and cameras for security, and medical imaging devices is lacking in Europe. Present contacts are limited to a national level.
We plan to organize one meeting dedicated to a better mutual knowledge of the European potential in the development of very low temperature instrumentation, to create a Network of users and suppliers of Cryogenic data in order to transfer knowledge among research laboratories and to European industry: "Industry-Research Network: information, dissemination, contact, opening new markets through innovation".
The scientific and technical results generated by the MICROKELVIN Collaboration are expected to attract considerable interest from the general public. The Absolute Zero of temperature, the surprising properties of systems such as superconductors, neutron stars, cosmological topological excitations, and Dark Matter, are fascinating subjects easily published in the general press, including magazines aimed at children and teenagers. A special effort will be made to encourage publication in several European magazines, newspapers, in several European languages to ensure adequate diffusion. One member of the Dissemination Committee will be appointed as the person responsible for this action.
In this task Web and e-mail communication will play an important role; three aspects will be preferentially covered:
Establishing updated e-mail lists is essential for this purpose, and will be done with high priority.