1,2,2,3,5,- 1LTE / Observatoire de Paris, LNE-OP, Paris, France (sebastien.merlet@obspm.fr)
- 2Institute of Geodesy and Cartography, Centre of Geodesy and Geodynamics, Warsaw, Poland
- 3Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Sezione di Catania – Osservatorio Etneo, Catania, Italy
- 4Finnish Geospatial Research Institute, National Land Survey of Finland, Espoo, Finland
- 5GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences, Section Hydrology, Potsdam, Germany
- 6Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft, The Nether-land
- 7Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières, Orléans, France
- 8ISTO, UMR 7327, Univ Orléans, CNRS, BRGM, OSUC, Orléans, France
Aligned with the objective of strengthening EU’s strategic autonomy and competitiveness, the Horizon Europe project EQUIP-G [1] started in June 2025. The main objective is to establish a European perennial Research Infrastructure managing a shared park of quantum sensors and a terrestrial reference gravity network. Ten absolute commercially available quantum sensors will be acquired: seven gravimeters, two dual gravi-gradiometers and one onboarded gravimeter. Some activities of the project aim to provide comprehensive quality control to all these new instruments, and traceability over time and use cases to ensure a consistent park of instruments. This includes consolidation of measurement protocols and quantum sensor validation.
Every instrument will be tested as comprehensively as possible at LNE, the French National Metrological Institute, which is already involved in the implementation of the RIA Qu-Test project [2]. At this site, a reference gravimetric station has been operational and monitored with state-of-the-art gravity instrumentation since 2003. It is part of MetriQs-France platform [3] and allows the concurrent installation of six mobile gravimeters at the same time.
The first tests are carried out in a laboratory environment and are followed by outdoor tests. This allows to characterize each instrument and detect any faults, before sending it out for deployment under field conditions to run the measurement activities within planned project use cases. One of these use cases involves the installation of a network of quantum gravimeters at the O-ZNS site, 100 km away from LNE. In addition to the importance of this use case for the project, the fact that the two sites are close to each other allow us to extend the tests on each instrument with the execution of field measurement at O-ZNS.
In order to guarantee the quality of the measurements carried out in the frame of the different EQUIP-G use cases and to ensure the traceability and quality of the measurements from the gravimeters, two absolute comparisons will be organized in 2026 and 2028. They involve other absolute gravimeters, owned by consortium partners, which have taken part in all metrological International KC and European (EURAMET) comparisons in the last 20 years. In addition, the LNE-OP/LTE and UBER self-made laboratory quantum instruments will participate in the final comparison, which will strengthen the evaluation of the final results, in particular through the comparison of sensors based on different technologies and tested to the state-of-the-art level of performance.
These testing and metrology activities of EQUIP-G project will be presented in the poster.
EQUIP-G project is funded by the European Commission under the Horizon Europe program, grant number 101215427
[1] https://www.equip-g.eu
[2] https://qu-test.eu
[3] https://www.lne.fr/fr/metriqs-france/plateforme-hub
How to cite: Merlet, S., Caldani, R., Dykowski, P., Ciesielski, A., Carbone, D., Nuttunen, E., Näränen, J., Bilker-Koivula, M., Reich, M., Reudink, R. H. C., Jacob, T., Boujoudar, M., Azaroual, M., and Lautier-Gaud, J.: Quantum sensor testing activities within EQUIP-G project, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-12409, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-12409, 2026.
