In the T-REQS lab we have now loaded our first Er atoms into optical tweezers! This is an significant step towards our goal of producing arrays of single atoms within tweezers which we will use to study the interactions of Rydberg atoms.
Samuel White
Gabriele wins best poster prize
Congratulations to Gabriele who won the prize for the best poster at the EMMI Workshop on Long-Range Ultracold Interactions 2022.
Supersolids go round!
In recent years a new state of matter has appeared on the scene: the supersolid. This has both the crystal structure of a solid and the properties of a superfluid, a quantum fluid that can flow without friction. We show that an established method for forming supersolids in a one-dimensional crystal–by tuning how the particles interact with one another–fails to reach supersolidity in two dimensions. However, by developing a new theoretical technique we demonstrate that cooling a gas of magnetic atoms directly into the supersolid regime is a viable method for creating two-dimensional supersolids in round, pancake-shaped traps. This leads us to the experimental observation of the first supersolid in a round trap, and opens the door to future theoretical studies of the crystal growth.
You can find out more about this in our paper.
Elena awarded “Ho una laurea nella manica” prize
Elena has been awarded the prize “Ho una laurea nella manica” established by her hometown for young people who graduated cum laude in 2020.
In the last few years the town of Spinea (Ve) established a prize for young students who got excellent results at University. Elena Poli was awarded the prize “Ho una laurea nella manica” for her master degree with honours at the University of Padova in 2020. There, she completed her bachelor and master degrees and she had the opportunity to work on her master thesis about “Quantum droplets and bright solitons in mixtures of Bose-Einstein condensates” under the supervision of Prof. Francesco Ancilotto.