Murder Mystery Dinner

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!

Christmas celebration

Christmas celebration

Our team participated at the christmas celebration of the Institute, this time at a hut above Innsbruck!

Glitches in supersolids: links between neutron stars and quantum matter

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

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.

Atoms in Tweezers

Atoms in Tweezers

In the T-REQS lab we have now loaded atoms in our optical tweezers.

Vortices in a dysprosium gas

Vortices in a dysprosium gas

By stirring the magnetic field which polarizes the atoms in a dysprosium condensate, we were able to generate vortices–tiny quantum tornadoes–in a dipolar gas for the first time!

Bloch Oscillations

Bloch Oscillations

By letting an erbium quantum droplet fall under gravity through an optical lattice, it is possible to understand the inter-atomic interactions and quantum fluctuations through variations of the Bloch oscillation.  

ERC Advanced Grant DymetEr has been funded!

ERC Advanced Grant DymetEr has been funded!

Happy 10th Birthday to the first Erbium BEC!

Happy 10th Birthday to the first Erbium BEC!

Phase coherence in out-of-equilibrium supersolid states of ultracold dipolar atoms

Phase coherence in out-of-equilibrium supersolid states of ultracold dipolar atoms

By quenching the contact interaction, it is possible to destroy the phase coherence in a dipolar supersolid. However, the supersolidity is “repaired” when reversing the dephasing process.  

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 theoretical subdivision 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
A key step in creating controlled interactions in dipolar quantum mixtures is the characterization of interspecies Feshbach resonances.
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Congratulation to Lauriane Chomaz on the publication of her paper in Phys. Rev. A. In this work, Lauriane investigates the general relationships existing between the density contrast, the superfluid fraction, and the response to a high-energy scattering probe of density-modulated states within a classical-field approach.
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In joint theoretical and experimental work with our theory colleagues A.-M. Rey (JILA) and B. Zhu (ITAMP) we investigate dipolar induced magnetization-conserving spin exchange dynamics with fermionic Er in a 3D optical lattice. Our work is now published in Physical Review Research.
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Group news
Now in Nature Physics! Supersolids are fluid and solid at the same time. In jointly collaboration work, together with Thierry Giamarchi, theoretical physicist from the University of Geneva, we have for the first time investigated what happens when such a state is brought out of balance.
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Philipp and Gianmaria held their defenses for their PhD thesis and are now officially Doctors of Philosophy. Congratulations and we wish you all the best for your future!
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Lauriane and Francesca, together with Blair Blakie and Danny Bailly (Otago University), theoretically studied the supersolid phase diagram of dipolar quantum Bose gases in cylindrical geometries. The work is now published in Physical Review Research.
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Welcome and goodbye
With the beginning of the new year, Matt joins our team as Post-Doc in the Er-Dy LAB. Welcome to Innsbruck, Matt!
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With the beginning of the new year, Bing joins our team as Post-Doc in the ERBIUM lab. After finishing his PhD in Heidelberg (DE) and Hefei (CN) under the supervision of Prof. Jian-Wei Pan in 2015, he continued as a Post-Doc in Heidelberg. Welcome, Bing!
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Alexandre de Martino, master student from the Institut d'Optique at Palaiseau, France, joins our group for five months to do his final master internship. He will focus on upgrading the transversal cooling scheme of our Erbium experiment.
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