Dipolar Quantum Gases – Page 2 – Center for Ultracold Atoms and Quantum Gases, IExP and IQOQI, Innsbruck

2025 Group Openings!

We are happy to announce that our dipolar quantum gas group has an Academy Scientist + Postdoc and PhD positions open for 2025!

PhD Position in San Sebastian

Apply now for building a powerful new platform for quantum simulation with dysprosium atoms in programmable optical tweezer arrays. More information in the Openings 2025 Section!

“Dance your PhD 2025” contest by Science and AAAS

Congratulations to our PhD student Arfor, who turned our research topics into a dazzling music video!

Long-Range Interactions Workshop 2025

Vortices in a supersolid

2024’s Biggest Breakthroughs in Physics: Our research on the observation of vortices in a dipolar supersolid featured by Quanta magazine!

Austrian of the Year 2024

Francesca was crowned as the ‘Austrian of the Year’ in the research category at the Austria 24 gala by Die Presse!

Summer BBQ

Our 2024 Summer BBQ took place on the 24th of June and celebrated the many different achievements of the group!

Murder Mystery Dinner

Our 2024 group dinner took place on the 18th of January at CasoinN da Giorgio restaurant, with a 1920’s Murder Mystery theme!

Glitches in supersolids: links between neutron stars and quantum matter

By emulating the connection between a rotating supersolid phase and an external solid phase, we were able to replicate “glitches” – sudden jumps in the solid angular momentum driven by quantum vortices leaving the supersolid.

Cluster of Excellence Quantum Science Austria granted

Three Clusters of Excellence in Innsbruck have been funded! With highly endowed clusters of excellence, the Austrian Science Fund FWF creates Austrian flagships of basic research. The University of Innsbruck will coordinate the Cluster of Excellence for Quantum Sciences.

Our group studies dipolar quantum gases made of Erbium (Er) and Dysprosium (Dy) atoms. These extraordinarily magnetic species are a powerful new resource for reaching quantum simulation with strong connectivity, in which each atom is coupled to the other over long distances, and exploring exotic phases of matter that have no classical counterpart.

We have three labs: the ERBIUM LAB, where Er was Bose condensed for the first time ever, the Er-Dy LAB which studies quantum dipolar mixtures under a quantum-gas microscope, and the T-REQs LAB, where we trap Er atoms in arrays of optical tweezers for Rydberg physics. Recently, we have established a Theory Group aimed at studying and predicting dipolar phenomena in dipolar quantum gases and mixtures.

The group, led by Francesca Ferlaino, is jointly located at the Institute for Experimental Physics (IExP) of the University of Innsbruck and at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and it is part of the Innsbruck Center for Ultracold Atoms and Quantum Gases.

Follow our group’s updates on Bluesky and LinkedIn !

News from the labs

Optical Tweezer Arrays of Erbium Atoms

Now published in the journal “Physical Review Letters”, and featured in Physics Magazine as an Editors' Suggestion! The T-REQS Lab presents the first successful trapping of single erbium atoms in an array of optical tweezers, marking a significant milestone in the use of erbium for quantum simulation.

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Vortices in a dipolar supersolid

Now published in Nature! In an internal collaboration between the Er-Dy Lab and the Theory subgroup, our new pre-print reveals a fundamental difference in vortex nucleation between the unmodulated superfluid and the modulated 2D supersolid phase of dipolar BECs.

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Excitations of a two-dimensional supersolid

Now published in the journal “Physical Review A”! The newest work from the Theory group are the results of PhD student Elena Poli’s DK-ALM research stay abroad in the group of Professor Blair Blakie at the University of Otago, NZ.

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