Er-Dy LAB

The Er-Dy LAB focuses on many-body quantum phenomena in a dipolar quantum mixture of two highly magnetic lanthanides, Erbium and Dysprosium.

The designing process of the experimental apparatus started in late 2014 and several concepts have been developed in collaboration with our ERBIUM Team and the Er-Team at Harvard University led by Markus Greiner.

Er-Dy mixtures

In 2018, we produced the first quantum degenerate dipolar mixture of Erbium and Dysprosium!!

This two rare-earth species are highly magnetic with a magnetic moment of 7µ_B and 10µ_Bfor Er and Dy respectively. A crucial aspect is that the have very similar atomic properties such as melting point, mass and the optical spectrum. The Er-Dy LAB is able to either operate on a single species (Er or Dy) or to produce dipolar imbalanced Bose-Bose, Bose-Fermi and Fermi-Fermi Er-Dy mixtures.

A microscope for dipolar atoms

A quantum gas microscope is an optical system that allows to image single atoms in an optical lattice in situ. This conceptually simple, yet technologically demanding technique makes it possible to directly study the interactions between atoms in periodic potentials, a scenario which is only possible to simulate numerically for very limited system sizes. In contrast to other groups, we are aiming to realize such a microscope with atoms featuring a large, permanent magnetic dipole moment. The inter-atomic dipole-dipole interaction adds a new term to the Hamiltonian describing the ensemble, and therefore allows to investigate a whole new class of quantum systems. The behavior of the system will critically depend on the interplay between the different interaction terms, whose magnitude and direction dependence may be tuned experimentally over a wide range. Thus, a large variety of interesting quantum systems can be simulated and investigated.

A full list of the Er-Dy Lab Publications can be found here

Interested in joining us? Check out here.

Lab news

Benedict joins T-REQS-lab

Benedict Hochreiter has joined the T-REQS team for his master thesis. He will concentrate on Rydberg physics in multi electron atoms.

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First Dipolar Quantum Mixtures!

Now on Physical Review Letter! We have created for the first time a dipolar quantum mixture by combining two highly magnetic atomic species, Erbium and Dysprosium. The experiment has been conducted in the RARE Lab and we observe simultaneous quantum degeneracy of 5 Bose-Bose mixture and a Bose-Fermi one.

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Sandra joins RARE-lab

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Claudia wins Top Poster Prize at ICAP 2018

Claudia Politi, a PhD student in the RARE Lab, has won the first prize for best poster at ICAP 2018 in Barcelona. More than 600 posters were presented during ICAP 2018. The prizes were decided by the Poster Awards Commission of ICAP 2018 presided by Prof. Fritz Haake. Congratulations Claudia!

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Max wins YAO 2018 Poster Prize

Maximilian Sohmen, PhD student in the RARE Lab, has won the prize for best poster of YAO2018. Congratulations! The Young Atom Opticians (YAO) conference is a yearly meeting, organized by and for PhD candidates in the field of atomic, molecular and optical physics. This year it took place in Glasgow

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The magic of Er and Dy: magneto-optical trap with only 5 beams!