Scientific Highlights

First observations of ‘mixed’ black hole and neutron star pairs

June 29, 2021

The Virgo, LIGO and KAGRA scientific collaborations today announced the first observation ever of binary systems consisting of a neutron star (NS) and a black hole (BH). The existence of these systems was predicted by astronomers several decades ago, but they had never been observed with confidence, either through electromagnetic or gravitational signals, until now.

Dark Energy Survey (DES) releases most precise look at the universe’s evolution

May 27, 2021

The Dark Energy Survey collaboration has created the largest ever maps of the distribution and shapes of galaxies, tracing both ordinary and dark matter in the universe out to a distance of more than 7 billion light years. The analysis, which includes the first three years of data from the survey, is consistent with predictions from the current best model of the universe, the standard cosmological model. Nevertheless, there remain hints from DES and other experiments that matter in the current universe is a few percent less clumpy than predicted.

Successful Start of Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Follows Record-Setting Trial Run

May 17, 2021

International collaboration aims for 3D map of the universe, unraveling of mysterious ‘dark energy'. IFAE participates in the DESI Barcelona-Madrid Regional Participation Group, made up of researchers from IFAE, ICE-CSIC, CIEMAT and IFT-UAM. The instrumental contribution to DESI of the group consisted of the design, construction and installation of the complete Guiding, Focusing and Alignment system (GFA).

New Instrumented baffle installed at Virgo

April 28, 2021

The installation culminates more than two years of work at IFAE for the design and construction of a novel and innovative device to control and monitor the stray light inside the experiment, a persistent source of noise at interferometers. For the first time a Spanish Institution is making a significant hardware contribution to a worldwide leading gravitational waves experiment using ground-based interferometry.

Dark Energy Survey makes public catalog of nearly 700 million astronomical objects

January 14, 2021

The international collaboration releases a massive, public collection of astronomical data and calibrated images from six years of surveys. This data release is one of the largest astronomical catalogs issued to date.

Deep Detection, new IFAE spin-off that offers new industrial inspection solutions combining X-ray detection and artificial intelligence

November 4, 2020

Deep Detection is based on a technology developed at IFAE in the Medical Imaging group led by Dr. Mokhtar Chmeissani with the aim of creating medical and industrial applications derived from the knowledge obtained at IFAE in the development of detectors for particle physics experiments.

Over 100 black holes detected by Virgo and LIGO in the first run of 2019

October 29, 2020

The classification and definitive analysis of the 39 events detected by Virgo and LIGO in the third observation period was published today on ArXiv. Most of these are black hole mergers, the characteristics of which, however, question some established astrophysical models and open up new scenarios.

QuantumCAT: Accelerating the application of quantum technologies

October 20, 2020

A consortium of research institutes and industry partners in Catalonia join forces to develop the Quantum Technologies Hub. IFAE participates.

Proposal to include the Einstein Telescope in the ESFRI roadmap presented

September 10, 2020

The proposal to include the Einstein Telescope, a pioneering third-generation gravitational-wave (GW) observatory, in the 2021 update of the European Strategic Forum for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) roadmap has been submitted.