Category Archives: News

Anamika has defended her PhD (@ Delft)

Anamika Nair Karunakaran, who did an internship in our lab 2016 has successfully defended her PhD at the University of Delft. Her topic was “Investigations of microresonator based frequency combs”

Sofia Botsi: seminar on the BECs on the International Space Station

Our alumni, Sofia Botsi, comes to give us a seminar on the dipole trap for the International Space Station that she is working on (Wednesday 28 February 2024, 12:00 – 13:00, in the lab).

An Optical Dipole Trap for NASA’s Cold Atom Lab

When atoms are cooled down to temperatures within a millionth of a degree of absolute zero, they form exotic quantum states, such as Bose-Einstein Condensates (BECs). While BECs have been routinely produced in terrestrial laboratories, there are increasing efforts in creating and utilizing these macroscopic quantum phenomena in the microgravity environment for fundamental physics investigations. NASA’s Cold Atom Lab (CAL) instrument is a multiuser ultracold atomic physics facility operating onboard the International Space Station that has enabled such space studies of interacting quantum gases since its launch in 2018. In addition to the toolbox of capabilities originally built into CAL, here the compatibility tests for an optical dipole trap development as a potential addition to a future science module resupply are presented. Such an implementation can further enhance the association of weakly-bound diatomic molecules from Rb and K atomic mixtures enabling for ultracold molecule studies.

Link to a poster on the topic

And a link to the preprint of their related Nature Paper

Sofia Botsi takes up a Postdoctoral Fellow at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Congratulations to Sofia… for her Postdoctoral Fellow at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Panagiotis Christodoulou takes up his Postdoc at the ETH Zürich

Panagiotis takes up his postoc at the ETH Zürich in the Group of Tilman Esslinger.

Nobel Laureate, Alain Aspect, in the BEC lab

A nice photo with him in the BEC lab with Jean Dalibard, Alain Aspect and Yun Ye.

The 2017 Onassis Lectures in Physics on Quantum frontiers explored with cold atoms, molecules and photons was in the Honour of Serge Haroche. This year’s Nobel Prize Winner, Alain Aspect, was also one of the speakers.

CARIOQA-PMP has been approved by the EU

Our research proposal “Cold Atom Rubidium Interferometer in Orbit for Quantum Accelerometry – Pathfinder Mission Preparation” (CARIOQA-PMP) has been approve by the EU!

The objective of the CARIOQA-PMP project is to enable Europe to deploy quantum gravimeters/accelerometers in space through a Quantum Pathfinder Mission within the decade.

The future CARIOQA of the EU is to map earth’s gravity field using

Our Colloquium for Review of Modern Physics has been accepted!

Colloquium: Atomtronic circuits: From many-body physics to quantum technologies

Rev. Mod. Phys. (Link)

Luigi Amico, Dana Anderson, Malcolm Boshier, Jean-Philippe Brantut, Leong-Chuan Kwek, Anna Minguzzi, and Wolf von Klitzing

Accepted 13 June 2022

ABSTRACT

Atomtronics is an emerging field that aims to manipulate ultracold atom moving in matter wave circuits for both fundamental studies in quantum science and technological applications. In this colloquium, we review recent progress in matter-wave circuitry and atomtronics-based quantum technology. After a short introduction to the basic physical principles and the key experimental techniques needed to realize atomtronic systems, we describe the physics of matter-waves in simple circuits such as ring traps and two-terminal systems. The main experimental observations and outstanding questions are discussed. We also present possible applications to a broad range of quantum technologies, from quantum sensing with atom interferometry to future quantum simulation and quantum computation architectures.