Thales Research & Technology-France, located in Palaiseau near Paris, is the main multidisciplinary research unit of the Thales group, one of the major world players in aerospace, space, defense, transportation and security. Thales Research & Technology-France has strong scientific links with industries and universities, either in France or internationally. Its specificity is to cover a broad range of research fields in hardware and software technologies, bearing in mind the possible application of this research to future Thales products.

In particular, the Physics Research Group has a strong expertise in optics and photonics, atomic physics, semiconductors, spintronics, nanostructured materials, etc. It has many ongoing collaborations, in particular with several partners of the Labex First-TF. Within this framework, Thales has developed its own expertise on numerous subjects having applications in various fields such as: microwave photonic, RF spectral analysis, RF sampling, photonics components, inertial sensors, magnetometry, ultrastable oscillators and atomic clocks.