The Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation (MESRI) and the General Secretariat for the Investment Plan (SGPI) have just announced the winners of the call for Equipements structurants pour la recherche "Equipex+". Among the 50 selected projects, the T-REFIMEVE project, coordinated by the Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers and co-coordinated by SYRTE, is among the top of the ranking and among the 32 projects ranked A+.

The objective of T-REFIMEVE is to provide the scientific community and industrials with a complete set of timing signals at the best international level that metrology laboratories can provide, taking advantage of the exceptional accuracy of atomic clocks and the guided propagation in optical fibers. More than 30 laboratories and institutes throughout France will be connected. Other laboratories in the vicinity will be able to connect easily at a later date. This situation is unique worldwide.

It is by using the optical fibers of the national telecommunication network RENATER that the time and frequency signals elaborated at the SYRTE will be transported to the users. In order to maintain the initial accuracy, the fluctuation during transport must be corrected. Realized by optical and electronic methods this correction is so perfect that the users connected to this network have a signal of the same quality as if the clock had been moved to their laboratory. This is a formidable mutualization that is a technological breakthrough with the global navigation service of constellations such as GPS and Galileo.

The SYRTE, co-investigator of the project, is particularly involved in applications for chronometric geodesy which will exploit the full potential of this project, with SHOM and IPGP as new partners. It is based on the fact that a clock delivers a frequency that depends on its altitude. Based on this principle and by connecting the French tide gauges of Brest, Marseille and Dunkirk to the T-REFIMEVE network, we will be able to monitor the sea level while benefiting from the ultimate performance of the atomic clocks and the fiber network. The precision of the expected cm, unrivalled by GPS, is exactly that required to monitor the rise in sea level, linked to global warming and expected in the coming decades.

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contact : Paul-Eric Pottie