Taming, slowing and trapping atoms with light
Cold is quantum, Quantum is cool!
We shape quantum matter
Multicolored lasers for a variety of atoms
Keeping our eyes on the quantum world
Join our ultracool group!
High technology for great science

Welcome to the website of the Ultracold Quantum Gases group at the European Laboratory for Nonlinear Spectroscopy (LENS), the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Florence (Italy) and the Institute of Optics of the Italian National Research Council (CNR - INO). In our labs we use lasers and magnetic fields to produce the lowest temperatures of the Universe, just a few billionths of a degree above absolute zero...

At these temperatures, atoms stop moving and we can control them for a variety of different fundamental studies and applications. We can force atoms to arrange according to a periodic structure and simulate the behavior of crystalline solids and new materials. We can use the atoms as ultra-high accurate sensors to probe forces with the power of quantum mechanics. We can study how quantum particles combine together under the action of strong interactions and how superfluidity develops. We can use these ultracold atoms to process information and develop new quantum technologies.

Dress warmly and... follow us for this ultracold journey!

LAST NEWS

Observed the link between dissipative dynamics and phase slips in a fermionic Josephson junction

We study the emergence of dissipation in an atomic Josephson junction between weakly coupled superfluid Fermi gases. We find that vortex-induced phase slippage is the dominant microscopic source of dissipation across the BEC–BCS crossover. We explore different dynamical regimes by tuning the bias chemical potential between the two superfluid reservoirs. For small excitations, we observe dissipation and phase coherence to coexist, with a resistive current followed by well-defined Josephson oscillations. We link the junction transport properties to the phase-slippage mechanism, finding that vortex nucleation is primarily responsible for the observed trends of the conductance and critical current. For large excitations, we observe the irreversible loss of coherence between the two superfluids, and transport cannot be described only within an uncorrelated phase-slip picture. Our findings open new directions for investigating the interplay between dissipative and superfluid transport in strongly correlated Fermi systems, and general concepts in out-of-equilibrium quantum systems.

A. Burchianti, et al.,
Connecting Dissipation and Phase Slips in a Josephson Junction between Fermionic Superfluids
Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 025302 (2018)

BEC transition of Dysprosium observed

We observed the transition to BEC for 162Dy atoms!
Our dipolar BECs are made up at the moment by up to 3⨯104 atoms. Atoms from the MOT are transferred into an in-vacuum optical resonator where we perform a first evaporation down to a few μK. Afterwards, we load the atoms in a crossed optical trap and condensation temperature is reached by evaporation ramps. The atomic dipoles are aligned along the vertical direction by an uniform magnetic field of a few Gauss and the vertical trapping frequency is higher than the horizontal ones to prevent dipolar collapse. The transition temperature for our trapping potential is below 100 nK.

Rubidium condensate in the new machine

We achieved a 87Rb condensate of 4⨯105 atoms in the F=2, mF=2 state. We use a hybrid trap consisting of a single focused laser beam at 1064nm (dimple) in the horizontal direction and a quadrupole magnetic field. The dimple is vertically shifted with respect to the quadrupole center to avoid Majorana spin-flips. A first evaporation ramp with a microwave driving the (2,2) to (1,1) transition, is followed by an optical evaporation.

Probing state-dependent interactions in bosonic Ytterbium

We report on the measurement of the scattering properties of ultracold 174Yb bosons in a three-dimensional optical lattice. Site occupancy in an atomic Mott insulator is resolved with high-precision spectroscopy on an ultranarrow, metrological optical clock transition. Scattering lengths and loss rate coefficients for 174Yb atoms in different collisional channels involving the ground state 1S0 and the metastable 3P0 states are derived. These studies set important constraints for future experimental studies of two-electron atoms for quantum-technological applications

L. Franchi et al.,
State-dependent interactions in ultracold 174Yb probed by optical clock spectroscopy
New J. Phys. 19, 103037 (2017)

Exploring quantum phase slips in 1D bosonic systems

Quantum phase slips, i.e., the primary excitations in one-dimensional superfluids at low temperature, have been well characterized in most condensed-matter systems, with the notable exception of ultracold quantum gases. Here we present our experimental investigation of the dissipation in one-dimensional Bose superfluids flowing along a periodic potential, which show signatures of the presence of quantum phase slips. In particular, by controlling the velocity of the superfluid and the interaction between the bosons we are apparently able to drive a crossover from a regime of thermal phase slips into a regime of quantum phase slips. Achieving a good control of quantum phase slips in ultracold quantum gases requires to keep under control other phenomena such as the breaking of superfluidity at the critical velocity or the appearance of a Mott insulator in the strongly correlated regime. Here we show our current results in these directions.

S. Scaffidi Abbate, et al.,
Exploring quantum phase slips in 1D bosonic systems
Eur. Phys. J. Spec. Top. 226, 2815 (2017)