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
Register now for the 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.
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News from the labs
Now published in the journal "Physical Review Research". We present an all-optical method for deterministically controlling the spin composition of a quantum gas, based on a clock-like transition, and demonstrate that this transition can also be used to create spin-selective light shifts!
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For German speakers: in this month's edition of 'Sterne und Weltraum' of Spektrum magazine, you will find an article about the links between glitches in supersolids and in neutron stars, written by our very own Elena Poli, Thomas Bland, Manfred Mark, and Francesca Ferlaino, alongside frequent collaborator, Massimo Mannarelli.
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Together with our local ultracold theory collaborator Russell Bisset and external collaborator Blair Blakie and their teams, we investigate the excitation spectrum of binary supersolids, revealing new sound and Higgs modes that are unique to this system!
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Group news
Congratulations to Senior Scientist, Dr. Manfred Mark on officially receiving his habilitation at UIBK!
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The Ferlaino group headed down south to Florence from October 29th to the 31st for the Ultracold Florence-Innsbruck Joint Meeting.
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Die Presse - the Austrian newspaper of record - has awarded Francesca the title of ‘Austrian of the Year 2024’ in the research category!
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Welcome and goodbye
We said goodbye to Academy Scientist Andrea Di Carli at the end of October 2024!
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We bade farewell to the Theory group‘s visiting PhD student Silvia Trabucco on the 21st of October, 2024!
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