Research Fellow 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 Dy-Yt Lab Section!
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!
“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!
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.
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.
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 four 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; the T-REQs LAB, where we trap Er atoms in arrays of optical tweezers for Rydberg physics; and the Dy-Yb LAB, currently under construction – this new experimental apparatus will be used to study many-body phases of highly-magnetic dysprosium and of mixtures with non-magnetic ytterbium. The Theory Group completes our team 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
What happens when an dipolar quantum gas is excited? Read our pre-print to find out!
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In this pre-print, we present our quantum gas microscopy setup, consisting of a high-numerical-aperture, in-vacuum microscope objective inside a quartz glass cell.
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Now published! Together with Thomas Pohl and others from Aarhus University we explore the role of temperature has on the supersolid formation, matching beautifully with our Er-Dy lab results!
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Group news
Congratulations to Elena for winning the UIBK Best Student Paper Award in the Faculty of Mathematics, Computer Science and Physics!
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Congratulations to Arfor for winning the UIBK Early Stage Funding grant!
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Andrea Litvinov, postdoc in the Er-Dy lab, has won the 2024 USPN Thesis Prize for his thesis “Manipulation of nuclear spins of strontium 87 in degenerate Fermi gases in SU(N) symmetry”.
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Welcome and goodbye
We bade farewell to Amal El Arrach on the 15th of April 2024, when she defended her master thesis - congratulations!
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Goodbye and congratulations to Simon Gschwendtner for defending his master thesis on the 5th of April 2024!
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Welcome to Hai-My Gian, who has joined the administrative staff as an assistant!
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