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).
Max held his defense for his PhD thesis and is now officially a Doctor of Philosophy. He moved to the Medizinische Universität Innsbruck. Congratulations and good luck!
It is now an exciting time to work with ultracold highly-magnetic quantum gases, thrived by the rapid developments of quantum science based on lanthanide species. We are continually searching for outstanding Master and PhD Students!
Francesca Ferlaino has been awarded the Cardinal Innitzer Prize for Natural Sciences 2021 last weekend in Vienna for her outstanding achievements in the field of ultracold quantum gases. Her pioneering work with lathanoid atoms has been internationally groundbreaking in this field.
Cardinal Christoph Schönborn awarded 26 scientists with the Cardinal Innitzer Prize at the Archbishop’s Palace in Vienna on Saturday. This year, due to the cancellation of last year’s award ceremony caused by the pandemic, the 2020 and 2021 prizes were awarded together. Named after Vienna Archbishop Cardinal Theodor Innitzer (1875-1955), the science prize is one of the most prestigious awards of its kind in Austria. It has been awarded by the Archdiocese of Vienna since 1962 and is supported by the Federal Ministry of Science, several provinces, as well as banks, insurance companies and the Chamber of Commerce. The list of laureates reads like a “who’s who” of Austrian science.
Francesca Ferlaino was awarded this year’s Cardinal Innitzer Prize for Natural Sciences for her pioneering work with ultracold quantum gases. Her work with lathanoid atoms was particularly highlighted. “As a scientist, you have made a difference when others jump on the bandwagon – nowadays, more and more physicists around the world are working with precisely these atoms. It is therefore no exaggeration to say that Ferlaino has done true pioneering work,” said laudator Ulrike Diebold from TU Wien.
For the first time, we experimentally observe the transition at 1299nm in atomic erbium. We demonstrate coherent control and perform a detailed study of the transition parameters.
Among the large variety of different energy levels available in erbium, the transition at 1299nm is of particular interest due to the associated narrow linewidth. In our experiment, we were able to measure an excited state lifetime of 178(19)ms, which corresponds to a linewidth of 0.9(1)Hz. In particular, we demonstrated the ability to control the atomic population in a coherent manner. In addition, in collaboration with G. Hovhannesyan and M. Lepers from the Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Carnot de Bourgogne, we present experimental results as well as theoretical calculations on the atomic polarizabilities for the involved atomic states, indicating opportunities for the realization of magic-wavelength or magic-polarizability conditions.
Welcome to Samuel, who has joined the T-Reqs team as PhD Student. Sam joined us from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität and the Duhram University (England), where he worked for his master thesis under the supervision of Prof. Simon Cornish.
