News

From June 25 to 27, 2025, Kento (a first-year master’s student) and Assistant Professor Takaku visited the Matsumura Laboratory at the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, The University of Tokyo. During their stay they used a pulsed-laser machining system to prototype sapphire masks for MKID development, and exchanged ideas about their research with the laboratory’s students. The visit proved extremely rewarding, providing great inspiration for driving their future work forward.

(Kento explaining his research.)

As internship students from Grenoble Institute of Technology, Léo Modart (left) and Loaëc Paol (right) will be staying in our laboratory for three months.

We are pleased to announce that Assistant Professor Takaku has joined the Astrophysics Research Laboratory at Okayama University. Expectations are high for the further advancement of astrophysics research. Under this new leadership, the laboratory aims to achieve even greater development.
(In the photo, Assistant Professor Takaku is the second person from the right in the front row.)

On April 24, 2025, first-year doctoral student Ikuma attended the OU-SPRING certificate presentation ceremony held at the 50th Anniversary Commemoration Hall on the Tsushima Campus. OU-SPRING is a JST SPRING-selected initiative that provides research incentive grants and other support to doctoral students, aiding their research and career development. The ceremony was also featured in the “Latest News” section of the university’s official website.

Our lab members went to the Okayama Sakura Carnival and enjoyed a cherry blossom viewing while admiring the beautiful blossoms. In addition, the fourth-year undergraduate students—Ueyama, Hattori, and Fukushima—who joined us this April participated for the first time, and we all had a wonderful time together.

Our laboratory’s Yusuke Takase (third year of the doctoral program, graduating in 2025) was selected from among the doctoral graduates of the Graduate School of Natural Science at Okayama University for the 2024 academic year, in recognition of his outstanding academic performance and character. We extend our heartfelt congratulations.

From March 24 to 28, 2025, he stayed at IRAP in Toulouse, France. During his visit, he discussed the LiteBIRD project and its science with Ludovic Montier (the person on the left in the photo), an IRAP researcher leading LiteBIRD’s European team, as well as with Anthony J. Banday and others, thereby clarifying the future direction and pending tasks. It was an extremely fruitful week.。

Takase from our laboratory has completed the doctoral program, and Namikuma and Omae have completed their master’s program. We sincerely commend their hard work and achievements to date, and we look forward to their continued success in the future. Congratulations!

From March 13 to 14, 2025, Namikuma and Higuchi from our laboratory participated in the “Core-to-Core for Young Scientists” seminar held at the Yaesu Academic Commons in Tokyo.

This seminar served as a networking event for young researchers involved in various projects studying the cosmic microwave background (CMB). It provided an invaluable opportunity to exchange ideas not only with researchers from LiteBIRD but also with those engaged in other CMB polarization observation experiments.

During the seminar, Ikuma and Higuchi delivered oral presentations, sharing their research findings widely and receiving valuable feedback from many participants. In addition, the chance to explore the forefront of various CMB experiments and expand their professional networks proved to be a significant achievement.

We are pleased to announce that Yusuke Takase of our laboratory will be awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Science on March 4, 2025. Congratulations! His doctoral thesis is now available on arXiv.

Title:
Design of the full-sky scanning strategy and systematic effect control in a cosmic microwave background probe

Link:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.03176