Institutions

3 rue Michel-Ange
Paris, 75016
France

Summary: CNRS is France's national research organization and the largest fundamental-research agency in Europe, spanning essentially every scientific discipline. Rather than housing its own campuses, CNRS staff scientists (chargΓ©s and directeurs de recherche) are embedded within several hundred joint research units (UMRs) co-hosted by partner universities, grandes ecoles, and observatories across France. In experimental quantum science this ecosystem anchors world-leading efforts in cold-atom metrology and inertial sensing (SYRTE, LP2N), quantum optics and quantum networks (Laboratoire Kastler Brossel), NV-center and solid-state spin sensing (Institut Neel, L2C), chip-scale atomic clocks (FEMTO-ST), biophotonics and super-resolution imaging (Institut Fresnel, LOB, Institut Langevin), and space/ground astronomical instrumentation (LESIA, LAM, IRAP). Because CNRS has no departmental structure of its own, this pass surveys a representative cross-section of its quantum-sensing-relevant joint laboratories rather than an exhaustive national census.

Notes:

Warnings: CNRS itself has no faculty roster or departments; all researchers below sit in joint units (UMRs) co-tutelled with partner universities, which are referenced separately where already in the catalog.

Department(s)/lab(s): Astronomy | LESIA - High-Contrast Imaging & Exoplanet Instrumentation Team @ CNRS
Summary:

Boccaletti develops and exploits high-contrast coronagraphic imaging instrumentation for direct detection and characterization of exoplanets and circumstellar debris disks, including the four-quadrant phase-mask coronagraph built at Observatoire de Paris-PSL now flying on JWST's MIRI instrument, which recently resolved the inner dust belt and all four planets of the HR 8799 system in the mid-infrared.

Department(s)/lab(s): Engineering | FEMTO-ST - Time-Frequency Department, Atomic Clocks Group @ CNRS
Summary:

Boudot has been a permanent CNRS researcher in the Time-Frequency department of FEMTO-ST since 2008, developing compact and miniaturized atomic clocks based on coherent population trapping (CPT) in cesium vapor microcells, including all-optical, cavity-free designs that remove the traditional microwave cavity to shrink clock volume toward chip scale for GNSS, telecom and potential deep-sea seismic-sensing deployment. He received the EFTF Young Scientist Award in 2020 for this work.

Department(s)/lab(s): Physics | LKB - Quantum Fluids of Light & Nanophotonics Team @ CNRS
Summary:

Bramati leads the Quantum Fluids of Light team at LKB, studying exciton-polariton superfluids in semiconductor microcavities: quantized vortices, dark solitons, half-solitons behaving as magnetic monopoles, and analogue-gravity phenomena in polariton and photon fluids. The group also develops single-photon sources based on nanoemitters and coordinates the international Q-GAP program with Singapore's NRF on quantum fluids and photonics.

Department(s)/lab(s): Engineering | Institut Fresnel - Vector & Polarization Imaging Team @ CNRS
Summary:

Brasselet is a CNRS researcher at Institut Fresnel developing polarization- and orientation-resolved fluorescence microscopy, using controlled excitation and detection polarization states to map the 3D orientation and organization of fluorescent probes and biomolecular assemblies (e.g. lipid order, amyloid and cytoskeletal structures) at and beyond the single-molecule level, including recent work on the mathematical foundations of polarimetric microscopy.

Department(s)/lab(s): Physics | LKB - Rydberg Atoms Team @ CNRS
Summary:

Gleyzes is a CNRS researcher in the Rydberg Atoms team at LKB (successor to Serge Haroche's cavity-QED group), where he achieved the first quantum non-demolition detection of a single microwave photon. The team now prepares non-classical states of circular Rydberg atoms as probes for electric- and magnetic-field sensing below the standard quantum limit, uses quantum optimal control to navigate large Rydberg Hilbert spaces, and has demonstrated millisecond-lived circular states at room temperature, a route toward practical Rydberg-atom quantum sensors and simulators.

Department(s)/lab(s): Physics | L2C - Nanoscale Imaging with NV Centers Team @ CNRS
Summary:

Jacques is a pioneer of scanning NV magnetometry, using single nitrogen-vacancy spins in scanning-probe diamond tips to image magnetic textures at the nanoscale under ambient conditions. His team applies this to condensed-matter systems including antiferromagnetic domain walls and chiral spin textures, non-collinear antiferromagnetic order via single-spin relaxometry, and current-driven skyrmion motion in synthetic antiferromagnets, work carried out in close collaboration with materials-physics groups.

Department(s)/lab(s): Astronomy | LESIA - High-Contrast Imaging & Exoplanet Instrumentation Team @ CNRS
Summary:

Lagrange is a leading figure in direct-imaging exoplanet science, using the VLT/SPHERE extreme-adaptive-optics coronagraph (which she helped design and exploit) to detect and characterize young giant planets around nearby stars, most notably the beta Pictoris planetary system, and to study debris-disk and planet-formation signatures such as non-common-path aberration correction algorithms for next-generation direct-imaging instruments.

Department(s)/lab(s): Physics | SYRTE - Cold Atom Interferometry & Inertial Sensors Team @ CNRS
Summary:

Landragin directs SYRTE and its Cold Atom Interferometry and Inertial Sensors team, which develops light-pulse atom interferometers as absolute gravimeters and gyroscopes: the Cold Atom Gravimeter (CAG), whose single-laser pyramid-reflector design he co-invented and commercialized through the start-up Muquans (now Absolute Quantum Gravimeter, AQG), and continuously-operating cold-atom gyroscopes reaching record joint sensitivity. Applications span geodesy, hydrology, volcano monitoring and inertial navigation. He received the CNRS Innovation Medal in 2020.

Department(s)/lab(s): Physics | SYRTE - Optical Frequency Metrology Team @ CNRS
Summary:

Le Targat co-leads SYRTE's Optical Frequency Metrology team, which built and continuously operates two independent strontium optical lattice clocks alongside a mercury lattice clock, comparing them at the 10^-16 to 10^-17 level and to SYRTE's caesium fountain primary standards. This work underpins the prospective redefinition of the SI second on an optical transition and supports frequency-transfer, geodesy and fundamental-physics tests via fiber links to other French metrology laboratories.

Department(s)/lab(s): Engineering | Institut Fresnel - MOSAIC Biophotonics Team @ CNRS
Summary:

Rigneault leads the MOSAIC team at Institut Fresnel, developing label-free nonlinear optical microscopy (CARS/SRS) for chemically-specific imaging of lipids and biomolecules in tissue, and pioneering lensless, hair-thin fiber-bundle endoscopes based on wavefront control for minimally invasive deep-tissue and in vivo biological imaging. He holds 17 patents in optical engineering and molecular spectroscopy for the life sciences.