Welcome to the Quantum World!
Our group travelled to the Vienna City Hall for “Willkommen Quantenwelt” celebrating 100 years of quantum science. Thanks to Quantum Science Austria and collaborators for organizing this fantastic event!
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; the dy2b 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; and the DyPQ-S LAB currently build up in San Sebastian, where we will trap Dy atoms in tweezers for quantum simulation and quantum computation. 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
In this work we show that the seemingly dual rotational response of a supersolid arises from a single flow-counterflow mechanism, providing a microscopic interpretation of the phenomenological rigid/superfluid partitioning.
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Through a combined effort between the Erbium Lab and our theory collaborators, our new preprint demonstrates the first observation of Fano profiles in scattering resonances of ultracold atoms!
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Dancing supersolids synchronize - now published in Nature Physics! Our work shows that the nucleation of vortices in dipolar supersolids can be revealed by the onset of rotational synchronization.
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Group news
Francesca Ferlaino has taken over as managing director of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) and has started her second period in this role.
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We had an amazing time at our group event, enjoying an exciting canyoning adventure in Achenkirch.
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Francesca is one of the organizers of SPARK (Advancing Research and Knowledge), a new format for scientific meetings at DIPC.
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Welcome and goodbye
Eugen Dizer is a PhD student in the group of Richard Schmidt at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, Heidelberg. He is joining the theory group for a 2 months research visit from October to December 2026.
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Goodbye to Rory, who joined the Treqs lab for a 2 months internship from July to September!
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We say goodbye to Daniel, master student from Frankfurt am Main, who joined our theory group for a research project on quantum simulation of lattice gauge theories.
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