Austrian of the Year 2024

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

Summer BBQ

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

2024 PhD Openings!

2024 PhD Openings!

We are happy to announce that our dipolar quantum gas group has two PhD positions open for 2024/2025!

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.  

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 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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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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Group news

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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Die Presse - the Austrian newspaper of record - has nominated Francesca for Austria 24, the Austrians of the year in the research category! Voting is now open to the public: https://www.diepresse.com/18834314/forschung-das-sind-die-nominierten
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The first week of September 2024 marked the end of the 3 weeks of the Aurora Excellence Fellowship program and the beginning of a visit by Silvia Trabucco, who is a PhD student at Gran Sasso Science Institute in L'Aquila, Italy.
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Welcome and goodbye

We bade farewell to the Theory group‘s visiting PhD student Silvia Trabucco on the 21st of October, 2024!
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Felix Borchers joins us in the T-REQS lab for 5 months as a Masters Intern! Welcome to the group, Felix!
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At the beginning of October, Arina Tashchilina joined our team as a Post-Doc in the T-REQS lab. Welcome to Innsbruck, Arina!
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