News

From February 24th to 26th, 2026, the 13th KSETA Plenary Workshop took place in Wildberg. This year, three PhD students from the KKT had the opportunity to participate.

The workshop offered a varied program with talks from invited speakers covering different areas of astroparticle physics, engineering technologies and current research developments. The poster session provided a great chance for the Fellows to present their work and engage in lively discussions with researchers from across KSETA.

On 10 February 2026, our yearly excursion took place to the Tritium Laboratory and the KATRIN experiment at Campus North as part of the “Kältetechnik A” and “Cryogenic Engineering” lectures. The Tritium Laboratory Karlsruhe (TLK) is a globally unique large-scale facility that handles and processes tritium on a semi‑technical scale, hosting one of the world’s strongest tritium sources for neutrino mass experiments. At Campus North, students also visited the KATRIN experiment, an international project aiming to determine the effective neutrino mass with unprecedented precision using a 70‑meter-long experimental setup with a windowless gaseous tritium source and a high‑resolution spectrometer.

The third ET-LF Tower Integration Workshop took place on Elba from 29 to 30 September 2025. Experts in the field gathered to discuss critical design aspects to align efforts towards the baseline design of the ET-LF tower integration in the cryogenic interferometer. Our team is playing a leading role in coordinating these discussions.

We are collaborating with our Japanese colleagues from KAGRA, the cryogenic Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector, strengthening our efforts towards core design aspects of Einstein Telescope's cryogenic LF interferometer. Within the scope of a research visit from April to August 2025, our PhD student Xhesika Koroveshi visited the High Energy Accelerator Research Organisation (KEK) and performed cryogenic Q-measurements of newly-developed monolithic suspensions essential for ET, while also gathering hands-on experience that will be applied to our ERC-Grant-Facility, GRAVITHELIUM.

During this year's CERN excursion, our students witnessed the generation of superfluid helium (He-II) in the Cryolab, seeing some of its astonishing properties with their own eyes. We also visited a large cryogenic test facility for the LHC high-luminosity upgrade in SM18, and the new CO2 cooling system for ATLAS.

On the way back from CERN, we visited the Proton Therapy Center at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland, where we also learned a lot about its cryogenic helium infrastructure.

KIT

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