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

Quantum dynamics of impurities in a one-dimensional Bose gas

In an array of one-dimensional traps, we create impurities of K atoms immersed in reservoir of Rb atoms. The impurities are first localized by an external species-selective potential and then suddenly freed: their subsequent dynamics exhibits "breathing" oscillations, due to a weaker confining potential. We find that the amplitude of these oscillations is reduced when increasing the strength of the impurity-reservoir interaction, irrespective of its sign. We interpret our data with a polaric mass shift model derived following Feynman variational approach.

J. Catani et al.
Quantum dynamics of impurities in a one-dimensional Bose gas
Phys. Rev. A 85, 023623 (2012)

1d fermions in multicolor!

Correlations in systems with spin degree of freedom are at the heart of fundamental phenomena, ranging from magnetism to superconductivity. The effects of correlations depend strongly on dimensionality, a striking example being one-dimensional (1D) electronic systems, extensively studied theoretically over the past fifty years. However, the experimental investigation of the role of spin multiplicity in 1D fermions — and especially for more than two spin components — is still lacking. Here we report on the realization of 1D, strongly correlated liquids of ultracold fermions interacting repulsively within SU(N) symmetry, with a tunable number N of spin components. We observe that static and dynamic properties of the system deviate from those of ideal fermions and, for N > 2, from those of a spin-1/2 Luttinger liquid. In the large-N limit, the system exhibits properties of a bosonic spinless liquid. Our results provide a testing ground for many-body theories and may lead to the observation of fundamental 1D effects.

G. Pagano et al.,
A One-Dimensional Liquid of Fermions with Tunable Spin
Nature Phys. 10, 198 (2014)

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