10 Years Erbium BEC

On the International Women’s Day March 8, 2012 a team led by Francesca Ferlaino created the very first BEC from highly-magnetic erbium atoms in their lab at the University of Innsbruck. Today we celebrate the tenth anniversary of a discovery that marked (along with the first Dy BEC) the beginning of the Lanthanide Era in the field of long-range-interacting ultracold atoms. A curiosity: Innsbruck holds the record as the “condensing city” with its first BEC of Cesium (2002, Grimm’s Group), Strontium (2009, Schreck/Grimm’s Group), and Erbium (2012, Ferlaino’s Group).