10/08/2022
Breaking news! Our most recent experimental paper from the potassium lab, entitled “Realizing a 1D topological gauge theory in an optically dressed BEC”, is published this afternoon in Nature! In this experiment, we use a Raman-coupled Bose-Einstein condensate to engineer an effective gauge theory proposed in the 90s to describe the edges of fractional quantum Hall systems. Check the paper if you want to learn everything about our experiment and see chiral solitons – the many-body equivalent of edge states. If you want to learn the story behind our paper and see our lab, have a look at the ICFO News and the video summary of our work.
26/04/2022
Today is a relly big day in the QGE group: Anika defends her PhD thesis entitled Simulating a topological gauge theory in a Raman-dressed Bose-Einstein condensate in front of a committee formed by Patrik Öhberg (Edinburgh), Jérôme Beugnon (Collège de France) and Hugues de Riedmatten (ICFO). Very succesfully, of course! All our congratulations, Anika! Everyone can see now the path between “clearly skewed” clouds and the PhD diploma. We wish you all the best for the future, and will miss you in Barcelona!
13/04/2022
Our papers on simulating topological gauge theories with Raman-coupled potassium BECs are finally in the arXiv! Check here if you want to see how we engineer chiral interactions in the lab and simulate a one-dimensional reduction of Chern-Simons theory, and here if you want to learn more about topological field theories and dive into the theory aspects of our work.
08/04/2022
Congratulations to Sandra for being awarded a poster price in the Bad Honnef conference Frontiers of Quantum Gas Microscopy that she attended this week!
24/03/2022
Roland Finance joins the group for his M1 internship from Ecole Polytechnique, during which he will develop lasers to address the 3P0 clock state of strontium. Welcome to the QGE, Roland!
21/03/2022
Breaking news! The strontium lab reachs today quantum degeneracy, observing this evening its first BEC using the 86Sr isotope! The machine works! Congratulations!
17/02/2022
Eric Gil joins us for his Master thesis project, in the frame of the new Barcelona Master in Quantum Science and Technology. During the coming months, he will develop a new atomic source for our strontium apparatus. Welcome to the QGE, Eric!
16/02/2021
We get a new laboratory in ICFO’s brand new Mir-Puig building! Next step: a new experimental apparatus! Stay tuned!
22/12/2021
Congratulations to Sandra for succesfully defending today her thesis proposal in front of a committee formed by Giacomo Cappellini (LENS), Hugues de Riedmatten (ICFO) and Robert Sewell (ICFO). Well done, Sandra!
14/12/2021
Our project “Next Generation Quantum Simulators: From DYNAMIcal Gauge Fields to Lattice Gauge ThEory” (DYNAMITE) is selected for funding in the QuantERA call for quantum technologies! The project is coordinated by ICFO, and involves as partners the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, the University of Heidelberg, the University of Trento, ETH Zürich and the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. At ICFO, we will open a theory postdoctoral position on the project at the beginning of 2022, to work in close collaboration with our experiments. Do not hesitate to contact us if you are interested!
27/07/2021
Jonatan defends today his thesis proposal in front of a committee formed by Martin Robert de Saint Vincent (Paris), Morgan Mitchell (ICFO) and Robert Sewell (ICFO). Successfully, of course!
22/07/2021
Monika Aidelsburger (LMU Munich) visits ICFO for a couple of days. Besides attending her very cool colloquium, today we have a nice time showing her our labs.
16/07/2021
We load strontium atoms in a crossed optical dipole trap and measure a lifetime of more than 3 minutes. This confirms that, despite weird gauge readings, we have an excellent vacuum in the science cell! But today’s good news do not stop there: Ana is awarded a María Yzuel Fellowship Award and will continue working in the potassium team next year for her master thesis. Congratulations!
02/07/2021
We have a single-frequency red MOT of strontium!
01/07/2021
Today, Max Zayas joins the group as ICFO summer fellow. Welcome to the QGE, Max!
18/06/2021
Our project “Engineering quantum many-body systems with light-dressed quantum gases”, in collaboration with the team of Alessio Celi at UAB, has been selected for funding by the Spanish Research Agency! We offer a joint theory-experiment PhD position on the project, starting next Fall. Do not hesitate to contact Leticia or Alessio if you are interested in joining our team to explore topological gauge theories, supersolid phases and quantum magnetism using optically-coupled quantum gases!
09/06/2021
First strontium atoms in an optical dipole trap!
07/06/2021
We see first hints of laser cooling on the red intercombination line!
04/06/2021
Today, Ramón presents our experimental realization of a 1D topological gauge theory using Raman-coupled potassium BECs at DAMOP.
19/04/2021
New group members! Today, Toni Rubio Abadal joins the group for a postdoc on the strontium project, and Ana Pérez for a spring-summer internship on the potassium project. Welcome to the QGE, Ana and Toni!
16/04/2021
Antonio Estarellas joins the group as master student. During his thesis, he will work on the construction and frequency stabilization of 461 and 481 nm lasers for the strontium project. Welcome to the QGE, Antonio!
08/02/2021
Ramón and Elettra are awarded individual Marie Curie fellowships for their projects UltraComp: “Unconventional Phases of Ultracold Quantum Matter with Competing Interactions” and TopiKs: “Topological p-wave superfluids with isotopic K mixtures”. This is fantastic! Congratulations to both of you!
19/02/2021
Finally! Today we see our first strontium 3D MOT, using the 461 nm blue transition!
09/12/2020
Breaking news! The QGE group is awarded an ERC Consolidator grant! Leticia’s project “Unconventional superfluids in quantum gases with competing interactions” is selected for funding! This will allow us to explore new approaches towards quantum droplets, chiral BECs, stripe phases, and fermionic topological superfluids during the coming 5 years!
29/10/2020
Today, Craig defends his thesis proposal in front of a committee formed by Sylvain Nascimbene (Paris), Maciej Lewenstein (ICFO) and Robert Sewell (ICFO). Well done, Craig!
17/09/2020
Congratulations to Vasiliy for being awarded a prestigious Beatriu de Pinós postdoctoral fellowship for his project “Quantum simulation of topological and many-body systems with strontium atoms”! This is great!
29/05/2020
Today we see our first strontium 2D MOT! Our oven, Zeeman slower and 2D MOT work! Isn’t this blue color really awesome?
10/02/2020
Today is really an important day for the QGE group: Julio defends his PhD thesis entitled Two-component Bose-Einstein condensates with competing interactions in front of a committee formed by Luis Santos (Hannover), Thomas Bourdel (IOGS Palaiseau) and Jordi Boronat (UPC). Very successfully, of course! Congratulations, Dr. Sanz, from all of us! And remember: “keep important things in focus” for the future!
06/02/2020
Today we organize at ICFO the Annual Cold Atoms Meeting in the Barcelona Region. We have a busy day full of interesting talks and posters from all groups. Craig and Jonatan give talks on the progress of the potassium and strontium labs, and Anika and Jonatan (again!) present posters. Thanks a lot to the full QGE team for taking care of the organization and making this happen!
30/01/2020
Today is the kick-off meeting of the QuantumCAT project, which aims at transferring some of the (quantum) technologies that we develop in the lab to the Catalan industry. Our group takes part of the QuasiCAT subproject (Quantum Simulators in Catalonia). Thanks to Julio and Vasiliy for attending the meeting and presenting some of the technologies that we use on the potassium and strontium projects.
25/12/2019
QGE group season’s greetings: Feliz Navidad y Próspero 2020! And thanks a lot to Elettra for turning our 2019 research in the potassium and strontium labs into beautiful Christmas cards!
20/12/2019
Today Jonatan and Vasiliy improve the strontium oven spectroscopy, managing to see the strontium isotopic shift in the fluorescence signal, and to lock the blue laser to the absorption signal. Just in time for Christmas! In the evening we all go to celebrate. Exciting times await us in 2020 in the strontium lab and, of course, also in the potassium lab!
19/12/2019
First fluorescence and absorption signals from the strontium atomic beam.
17/12/2019
Leticia is for three days in Paris. During this time, she visits Dima Petrov at LPTMS, the Rydberg and quantum gases groups at Institut d’Optique, and the Fermi gases group at ENS. More importantly, she has the pleasure to be part of the thesis committee of Vincent Lienhard (former QGE internship student, 2014). As always, it is really great to discuss with the Paris colleagues about physics and visit the labs. It is even nicer to attend the PhD defense of Vincent, and learn more about the fantastic Rydberg experiments he has done during his thesis. All our congratulations, Dr. Lienhard, and our very best wishes for the future!
16/12/2019
Seeing fluorescence of the strontium atomic beam! Isn’t it beautiful?
13/12/2019
Our new experimental paper “Interaction control and bright solitons in coherently-coupled Bose-Einstein condensates” is now in the arXiv! Check here if you want to learn about a method for controlling interactions with a radio-frequency field, and how it can be exploited to create correlated atom pairs and new types of solitons and soliton trains.
And, breaking news! During the ICFO day, Cesar is awarded the experimental PhD award of the institute for his thesis “Quantum liquid droplets in a mixture of Bose-Einstein condensates”. See the ICFO announcement here! All our congratulations, Dr. Cabrera, for this very deserved prize! This is really something big! We all celebrate it with you during the ICFO Christmas party!
12/12/2019
Anika and Jonatan present today our latest work on the potassium and strontium labs in the ICFO annual poster session.
03/12/2019
Putting strontium in the oven spectroscopy chamber! We are really a strontium team now!
02/12/2019
After baking the oven spectroscopy chamber we get nice vacuum in it. Next step: load it with strontium.
28/11/2019
Building the vacuum chamber of the strontium machine!
26/11/2019
David defends today his Master thesis, “Design and construction of a new experimental apparatus for the laser cooling of strontium”, and is awarded the best grade. Congratulations, David!
21/11/2019
Assembling hexagonal arrays of steel microcapillaries for the strontium oven nozzle. Isn’t it nice?
19/11/2019
Luca Tanzi (former QGE postdoc 2014-2017) is successful in the CNR national competition, for a permanent position in Italy! All our congratulations, Luca, this is really great news! You definitely deserve it, after your fantastic work on Bose glasses, quantum droplets and dipolar supersolids!
08/11/2019
Today, Anika defends her thesis proposal in front of a committee formed by Hugues de Riedmatten (ICFO), Darrick Chang (ICFO) and Giacomo Lamporesi (Trento). Well done, Anika!
07/11/2019
Giacomo Lamporesi (Trento) visits us at ICFO, and gives a cool talk on their very recent observation of magnetic solitons in a mixture of sodium BECs. During two days, we have nice discussions with Giacomo on a broad range of topics, from Bose-Bose mixtures and 2D Bose gases, to imaging techniques, strontium oven nozzles and sideband-enhanced 2D MOTs. Thanks for the visit, Giacomo!
04/11/2019
Elettra Neri joins the group as postdoc. Welcome to the QGE, Elettra! Also, we organize a two-day brainstorming meeting at ICFO together with the (almost complete) Sengstock group from Hamburg , André Eckardt from Dresden and the QGE and QOT groups. These are two intense days full of short talks, physics discussions and new ideas. On Monday, Anika presents our density-dependent gauge field measurements and on Tuesday Vasiliy talks about his Paris Landau levels experiment. Thanks a lot to our Hamburg and Dresden friends for coming! Next meeting in spring in Hamburg!
08/11/2019
Vasiliy Makhalov joins the group as postdoc. Welcome to the QGE, Vasiliy!
01/10/2019
Ramón Ramos joins the group as postdoc. Welcome to the QGE, Ramón!
30/09/2019
Jonatan is for two weeks in Les Houches, where he attends a predoc school on “Interactions of light and cold atoms”. Have fun in the Alps, Jonatan, and learn a lot of useful concepts for the strontium experiment!
26/09/2019
Leticia is today at Collège de France in Paris, taking part in the PhD thesis committee of Manel Bosch (former QGE Master student, 2013-2014). It is great to see Manel again, and attend his very successful thesis defense “Coherence and relaxation of an optically-driven bosonic quantum gas”. Congratulations Dr. Bosch! Our very best wishes for the future!
13/09/2019
Today the problem with the AC regulation of the strontium lab is finally solved and, suddenly, all our problems with the injection of the blue slave lasers are gone. Thanks a lot to the maintenance team at ICFO for their help!
07/09/2019
Cesar and Leticia are this week in Sant Feliu de Guixols, attending the BEC 2019 conference. As always, the conference is really inspiring. We present two posters, on our droplets, soliton-to-droplet, rf- and Raman coupling results, and have a lot of interesting discussions.
05/09/2019
The strontium blue slave laser is injection locked to the master! In green you see the output power of the slave depending on the injection.
04/09/2019
Together with Pietro Massignan (UPC), Grigori Astrakhachik (UPC) and Luca Tagliacozzo (UB), Leticia organizes this week a workshop on “Dynamics and interactions in quantum gases” in the Institute for Catalan Studies, Menorca. Craig presents a poster on our most recent experiments on rf- and Raman-coupled potassium BECs, and we have really interesting talks and discussions with our colleagues from all around the world.
12/08/2019
The air conditioning of the strontium lab is finally adjusted properly. We can start working on the lasers!
05/08/2019
Today the vacuum pumps for the strontium machine arrived! Now only the vacuum chamber is missing.
25/06/2019
Daniel defends today his bachelor thesis, entitled “Holographic creation of arbitrary potentials for Bose-Einstein condensates with digital micromirror devices”, and is awarded the best grade (Matrícula de Honor). Congratulations, Daniel!
26/03/2019
The experimental part of the strontium experiment begins with measuring RF from the potassium lab. Conclusion: we need to shield it!
07/01/2019
Jonatan Höschele joins the group for his PhD thesis. Welcome to the QGE, Jonatan!
26/12/2018
Our paper “Feshbach resonances in potassium Bose-Bose mixtures” is published today in Phys. Rev. A. Thanks a lot to the APS for the (almost perfectly synchronized) Christmas present! And thanks a lot Cesar for turning our work into the 2018 QGE Christmas card!
Merry Christmas to everyone, and best wishes for 2019!
30/10/2018
Our new experimental paper “Feshbach resonances in potassium Bose-Bose mixtures” is now in the arXiv! In collaboration with Michal Tomza (University of Warsaw), we performed an extensive study of the scattering properties of the various potassium Bose-Bose mixtures accessible in our experiment, identifying some promising possibilities for future experiments. Click here to learn more about them!
10/10/2018
Today is really a big day: Cesar succesfully defends his PhD thesis, entitled Quantum liquid droplets in a mixture of Bose-Einstein condensates, obtaining the highest possible qualification! See the news in the ICFO website. Our warmest congratulations, Dr. Cabrera!
The days before and after the defense we have insightful discussions on strongly interacting potassium gases with the external members of the PhD committee, Dima Petrov and Rob Smith.
08/10/2018
David Jacobs (University of Hamburg) starts today his Master thesis in the group. David will start designing and constructing our new experiment, where we plan to explore highly-controllable arrays of two-electron atoms. Wellcome to the QGE, David!
04/10/2018
The group attends the annual FOR meeting, which this year is in Frankfurt. There, Julio, Cesar and Craig present a poster on our current experiments on coherently coupled BECs with tunable interactions, and learn more about synthetic gauge fields.
01/10/2018
Anika is during two weeks in Les Houches, attending a cool school on ultracold quantum gases.
26/09/2018
Today is Teo’s last official day in the QGE group. It was great having you as ICFO summer fellow here! Thanks a lot for all your work on ambient magnetic field monitoring and stabilization. We wish you all the best for the future.
01/09/2018
Luca is back in the QGE group for a while. We are all happy to have you back here, Luca!
31/08/2018
Today is Daniel’s last summer internship day in the group. During two months, he explored the applications of a Red Pitaya board for driving Zeeman transitions between internal states of potassium. Thanks a lot for your work, Daniel. Come back to the QGE soon!
27/07/2018
Today is Manon’s last day in the QGE. During the last months, she designed and constructed a laser system for coherently coupling two internal states of bosonic potassium using Raman transitions. We are sad to see you go, Manon. Thanks a lot for your excellent work, and best wishes for the future!
22/07/2018
This week Barcelona hosts ICAP, the International Conference in Atomic Physics! It is a fantastic occasion to discuss with most groups in the field, and get an overview of the latest research directions in atomic physics at large.
19/07/2018
The complete QGE group attends the informal quantum mixtures meeting organized by our UPC friends just before ICAP. Julio gives a droplet talk, and everyone enjoys the lively atmosphere and rich discussions.
11/07/2018
Leticia is today in Krakow, where she gives an invited talk on quantum droplets in the EGAS50 conference.
09/07/2018
Daniel Allepuz starts today his summer internship in the group. During two months, he will explore some applications of the FPGA Red Pitaya board for our experiments. Welcome to the QGE, Daniel!
02/07/2018
Teo Gil starts today his ICFO Summer Fellow project in the group. During three months, he will work on measuring and stabilizing ambient magnetic fields in our potassium experiment. Welcome to the QGE, Teo!
25/06/2018
Craig Chisholm joins the group for his PhD thesis. Welcome to the QGE, Craig!
Also, Leticia is today in Glasgow, where she presents our droplet results on the YAO 2018 conference. Thanks a lot to the Young Atom Opticians for the invitation to open their conference, for the lab tours and the nice poster session. Have a nice conference!
19/06/2018
Cesar presents today our droplet experiments to other Mexican PhD students during the 2018 CONACYT day at UPC.
15/06/2018
Renovation works start today in lab003. The new experiment is coming!
12/06/2018
Anika is awarded an INPhINIT La Caixa fellowship for her PhD studies! Congratulations!
11/06/2018
Dima Petrov visits us today at ICFO. We show him the lab and have quite some droplet discussions. Thanks for the visit!
10/06/2018
Annual ICFO trip to the Costa Brava. This year the bravest hike from Tamariú to Palamós, with stops for swimming, kayaking and vising the botanic garden in Cap Roig. Almost the complete QGE group attends. We really have a great day!
01/06/2018
Leticia attends the 2018 APS DAMOP meeting in Fort Lauderdale, where she gives an invited “hot topic” talk on our droplet experiments. This year the hottest topic are definitely cold molecules, which are finally chilly!
31/05/2018
The 39K BEC is back after all the technical upgrades on the experimental apparatus!
28/05/2018
Invited by Tilman Esslinger Leticia attends this week the QSIT Monte Verità workshop, where she gives a talk on our droplet experiments. It is really nice to be back in Switzerland and attend again a QSIT meeting. As in the old times…
23/05/2018
QGE dinner in Leticia’s place, to celebrate the “Return of the BEC”.
15/05/2018
First 41K BECs after the technical upgrades of the last months!
29/04/2018
The 2D and 3D MOTs are working nicely, even if the vertical beam of the latter now goes through the two imaging objectives. Cool!
19/04/2018
We finally understood our trouble when aligning the two imaging objectives around the vacuum chamber: strain-induced astigmatism and trefoil aberration from the vacuum viewports. Compensating it gives us a decent PSF through the complete system also when using the full NA=0.44.
17/04/2017
Leticia is this week in Bad Honnef, where she presents our droplet experiments in the biannual BEC “Quantum gases and quantum coherence” conference.
12/04/2017
Celebrating Leticia’s birthday at ICFO’s cafeteria. Thanks a lot to Anika for baking a cake! Although buying an already made one is also an option for the lazy ones 😉
09/04/2018
Manon Ballu (ENS Cachan) joins us today for her M1 project, where she will set up a Raman laser system for potassium atoms. Wellcome to the QGE, Manon!
27/03/2018
Our paper “Bright Soliton to Quantum Droplet Transition in a Mixture of Bose-Einstein Condensates” appears today in Phys. Rev. Lett. Cool!
13/03/2018
Leticia is in Boston this week, where she presents our droplet results in the CUA seminar. It is a great opportunity to visit the MIT and Harvard AMO labs, to discuss physics and also to meet again old friends. The visit is a bit cold though due to a winter storm…
02/03/2018
March’s issue of Nature Physics highlights our three papers published in 2018!
In a News and Views article, Dima Petrov reviews our two droplet experiments. And our magnetic polaron theoretical paper, in collaboration with the group of E. Demler at Harvard, has been chosen for a Research Highlight by Y. Li. Quantum mixtures rock!
26/02/2018
Cesar is this week in Obergurgl, where he attends the Quantum Optics 2018 conference and presents our work in a hot topic talk.
13/02/2018
Leticia is this week in Bilbao, attending the Quantum Simulation & Computation workshop organized by the QUTIS group. There, she gives an invited talk on our latest droplet results.
30/01/2018
First 2D and 3D MOTs after the replacement of the 2D MOT chamber!
26/01/2018
Leticia is today in Munich, visiting Fabian Heidrich-Meisner. There, she gives a talk on our latest results, and has also interesting discussions on the possibilities opened by potassium for the study of interacting bosonic Hofstadter strips.
24/01/2018
Many things happen today! Julio, Cesar, Anika and Bruno install the new magnet/coil/heating box around the new glass cell 2D MOT. It should allow us to generate all magnetic fields required, and at the same time keep a more stable potassium vapour pressure. In the mean time Leticia visits Heidelberg, where she has many interesting lab visits and discussions, and also gives a talk on our droplet experiments.
18/01/2018
Our paper “Quantum liquid droplets in a mixture of Bose-Einstein condensates” appears in today’s issue of Science, together with a Perspective article by Igor Ferrier-Barbut and Tilman Pfau.
11/01/2018
“Liquids that are less dense than an ideal gas”, a nice summary of our droplet experiments from Physics Today.
08/01/2018
Anika Frölian joins the group as PhD student. Welcome to the QGE, Anika!
26/12/2017
Our Plan Nacional project “QuDROP: Quantum droplets in attractive Bose-Bose mixtures” has been selected for funding! This should allow us to make a number of upgrades in our apparatus, including a professional microscope objective and a more powerful optical dipole trap laser. A really nice Christmas present!
25/12/2017
QGE group season’s greetings: Feliz Navidad y Próspero 2018!
Thanks, Cesar, for yet another artistic work!
18/12/2017
We finally get nice potassium absorption in our new 2D MOT chamber!
15/12/2017
Today is the ICFOday 2017. Bruno gives a talk, Cesar presents a poster and Julio gives lab tours to ICFOnians interested in learning more about our research. In the mean time, Leticia is in Madrid where she gives an invited talk in the Young Researchers Meeting of the Nicolás Cabrera Institute of the UAM. It is a nice occasion to get an overview of the research that goes on at the INC, and also to visit the low-temperature labs afterwards. Thanks for the invitation!
14/12/2017
Our paper “Quantum liquid droplets in a mixture of Bose-Einstein condensates” is published today ahead of press in Science!!! Check here to see the online version!
04/12/2017
Leticia is this week in Hong Kong, attending the conference Frontiers in Cold Atom Physics where she gives a talk on our droplet results. Thanks a lot to the Hong Kong colleagues for the invitation and the great discussions.
11/12/2017
Mariusz Gajda (Institute of Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences) is this week at ICFO, and gives today a really interesting talk on quantum droplets in Bose-Fermi mixtures. Thanks for the visit and the discussions, Mariusz!
30/11/2017
The complete group is these days in Hamburg, attending the annual meeting of the FOR project. Cesar gives a talk, Julio presents a poster and we all have interesting discussions with the Hamburg, Munich, Dresden, Palaiseau and Frankfurt groups. Thanks a lot to the Hamburg people for the organization and the great labtours!
27/11/2017
Tigrane Cantat-Moltrecht (Laboratoire Kastler Brossel) visits us today at ICFO, where he gives a nice talk on his PhD thesis work. We have several interesting discussions with him, on topics as diverse as circular Rydberg atoms and the best indium seals. Thanks a lot for the visit, Tigrane!
20/11/2017
Luis Santos (University of Hannover) visits us for three days at ICFO, during which we learn a lot about droplets and rotons in dipolar BECs.
14/11/2017
Giacomo Roati (LENS) visits us at ICFO and gives a great talk on Josephson oscillations, phase slips and ferromagnetic domains in strongly interacting Fermi gases. Thanks a lot for the visit, Giacomo!
13/11/2017
Julio is this week in Trieste, where he attends a cool conference on two-dimensional quantum gases and gives a talk on our latest droplet results.
30/10/2017
Our second experimental paper “Bright soliton to quantum droplet transition in a mixture of Bose-Einstein condensates” is finally in the arXiv! Check here if you want to understand the difference between composite bright solitons and quantum liquid droplets, and learn about analogies between droplets and high order optical solitons in non-linear media.
29/10/2017
Today is Philip’s last day in the QGE. Thanks a lot for all the contributions to the experiment that you did during your Master thesis! We wish you all the best for the future!
27/10/2017
Leticia is this week in Glasgow, attending the kick-off meeting of the DesOEQ project. There, she gives and invited talk on our latest droplet results. It is a very good occasion to learn more about the cool quantum gas research that is going on at Strathclyde, Cambridge and Oxford.
22/09/2017
Alberto finishes today his summer internship in the group, during which he developed a setup for optical manipulation of our droplets using a digital micro-mirror device. It was great having you in the QGE, Alberto! All the best for the future!
20/09/2017
Leticia is this week in Gdansk attending the Quantum Optics IX conference. There, she gives an invited talk on our recent and ongoing quantum droplet experiments. This is a very nice conference full of interesting presentations, posters and discussions. Thanks a lot to the organizers for the invitation!
08/08/2017
Thomas Bourdel (Institut d’Optique, Palaiseau) and Daniel Greif (Harvard University) visit us after the BEC conference. It is great to have them at ICFO and show them our potassium lab. In the afternoon, Daniel gives a talk where he presents their amazing single-site resolved studies of fermionic antiferromagnets. Thanks a lot to both of you for coming!
02/08/2017
Leticia is this week in the BEC 2017 conference in Sant Feliu de Guixols, where she gives an invited talk on our recent liquid droplet results. As usual, the conference is really really inspiring (but also a bit exhausting), with so many nice talks, posters and discussions.
28/08/2017
Breaking news! Our first experimental paper, “Quantum liquid droplets in a mixture of Bose-Einstein condensates”, is finally on the arXiv! Check here if you want to learn more about ultradilute quantum liquids stabilized by quantum fluctuations in a system with only contact interactions!
In the evening, we have a farewell dinner with Luca, who leaves us today to start a new postdoc position at LENS/INO-CNR in Florence and Pisa. There, he will work on the new dysprosium lab. We really enjoyed a lot working with you during the last three years in the QGE, Luca, and will really miss you here! Of course, we wish you all the best for your new life in Florence and hope that you will be visiting us often in Barcelona!
10/08/2017
Group barbecue in Bruno’s terrace. Cool!
09/08/2017
Celebrating Luca’s birthday in the new open-air space of ICFO’s cafeteria. Thanks a lot for the cake, Luca, and happy birthday again!
26/07/2017
Igor Ferrier-Barbut (University of Stuttgart) visits us at ICFO for a couple of days and gives a great talk on their latest dysprosium droplet results. We have nice discussions on dipolar vs. mixture droplets, and get a much clearer understanding of the microscopic details of dysprosium droplets. It is really interesting to realize that, despite the very different interactions at play, both systems share so many features. Thanks for the visit, Igor!
17/07/2017
Julio is this week in the YAO (Young Atom Opticians) 2017 conference, which this year takes place in Paris. There, he gives a talk on… quantum liquid droplets! It is great to meet and discuss with people from all groups in Europe, and learn so many things. Thanks to the local organizers -including Manel- for putting together such a nice conference.
12/07/2017
César attends the annual ICE (Quantum Information and Quantum Technologies Spanish Network) meeting in Madrid and gives an invited droplet talk in the quantum simulation session. It is a nice occasion to meet other experimentalists in Spain, such as the quantum communications group in Madrid or the ion trappers of Granada. Thanks a lot to the Madrid QUINFOG group for the organization! We are already looking forward to the next meeting!
28/06/2017
Jean-François Clément (Université de Lille) visits us for a couple of days and gives a talk on their kicked rotor experiments. We also have quite some discussions and explain him our 39K-41K cooling strategy. Good luck with your potassium machine in Lille!
20/06/2017
Alberto Muñoz de las Heras joins the group as internship student, within the frame of ICFO’s summer fellows program. During the next three months he will work on the generation of dynamical potentials with a digital micromirror device, and develop a test setup for correcting the aberrations introduced by the DMD. Welcome to the QGE, Alberto!
02/06/2017
Leticia visits the group of T. Pfau at the University of Stuttgart, and gives a talk on our ongoing droplet experiments. It is really interesting to discuss with the Dy team the analogies and differences between dipolar and mixture droplets, and to learn about their fantastic results.
29/05/2017
Leticia is this week in Florence, attending in beautiful Arcetri the conference “Quantum science approaches to strongly correlated systems : from ultracold atoms to high-energy and condensed matter physics”, where she gives an invited talk on our latest results on quantum droplets.
12/05/2017
“Measuring Chern numbers in Hofstadter strips”, a joint proposal with our theory friends from ICFO’s third floor, is now on the arXiv! Check here if you want to learn about Laughlin pump experiments with synthetic dimensions, and an intuitive way of understanding the Chern number.
20/04/2017
Luca and Leticia spend two days in Florence, attending the first meeting of the QUIC – Quantum insulators and conductors project, where Leticia presents an update of our ongoing droplet experiments. It is great to discuss with all the participants of the meeting and visit the ultracool ultracold LENS labs. We have particularly interesting exchanges with the potassium team on droplets, with Matteo Zaccanti on Efimov physics, and with the lithium lab on imaging. And, of course, it is a lot of fun to meet the Zurich and Florence friends again!
12/04/2017
Celebrating Leticia’s birthday in ICFO’s cafeteria. Thanks a lot for the cake!
03/04/2017
Bruno Naylor joins the group as a postdoc. Welcome, Bruno!
29/03/2017
Farewell lunch with Pierrick, who finishes this week his postdoc in the QGE. Thanks a lot for all your contributions to the experiment! We wish you all the best for your new research on inertial navigation with cold atoms!
23/02/2017
Group travel to Munich, to attend the kick-off meeting of the research group on artificial gauge fields and interacting topological phases on which we participate as associated member. There, Pierrick gives a talk on our latest experiments, and César, Julio, Luca and Philipp present a poster. Unfortunately, Leticia stays in Barcelona with a bad knee and cannot attend the cool talks, discussions and labtours.
10/02/2017
The complete group takes part in the 5th half-day meeting on cold atoms in the Barcelona region, which is this year organized by Bruno Juliá Díaz at the University of Barcelona. Luca gives a talk on our soliton and droplet measurements, and Julio presents a poster with all the experimental details. As always, it is great to learn on the progress of the different teams and discuss with Fabrice Gerbier (LKB), who is this year’s invited speaker.
16/01/2017
Pierrick visits LP2N at Institut d’Optique in Bordeaux, where he gives a talk on our recent liquid droplet experiments.
10/01/2017
Alessio Recati (Munich/Trento) visits us this week, and gives a talk on “Coherently coupled Bose gases”. We have many interesting discussions with him on RF coupled Bose gases, polarons and quantum simulations of gravity.
05/01/2017
“Many-body interferometry of magnetic polaron dynamics”, our theory proposal in collaboration with Y. Ashida, R. Schmidt and E. Demler, is now in the arXiv.
23/12/2016
“Synthetic Unruh effect in cold atoms”, our theory preprint in collaboration with J. Rodríguez-Laguna, M. Lewenstein and A. Celi, is accepted for publication in Phys. Rev A.
30/11/2016
“Proximity effects in cold atom artificial graphene”, our theory preprint in collaboration with T. Grass, R. Chhajlany, V. Pellegrini and M. Lewenstein, is accepted for publication in 2D materials. Cool!
24/11/2016
Bruno Naylor (Université Paris Nord) visits us for a couple of days and presents some of the experiments done during his PhD thesis, on the study of spin physics with chromium atoms.
18/11/2016
Philip and Luca do the first tests of our new green laser. It is really quite a bit of power…
17/11/2016
Julio and Pierrick assemble today our new 2D MOT chamber in lab 003.
27/10/2016
Our new 532 nm laser, which we will use for preparing low-dimensional quantum gases, arrives today!
25/10/2016
Julio succesfully defends today his Thesis Proposal in front of a committee formed by Thierry Lahaye (Institut d’Optique), Hugues de Riedmatten and Rob Sewell (ICFO). Well done, Julio!
We take advantage of Thierry’s visit for learning more about their bottom-up approach to quantum simulation using Rydberg atoms.
03/10/2016
Philip Thomas joins the group for his Master thesis within his physics studies at the University of Hamburg, and will work during the coming year on the design and construction of an optical lattice setup for our potassium experiment. Welcome to the QGE group, Philip!
30/09/2016
Iñigo finishes today his summer internship in our group, during which he worked on generating arbitrary potentials for our experiment using a digital micro-mirror device. It was great having you with us during the last three months. We wish you good luck for the future!
13/09/2016
Pierrick is this week in Newcastle attending the MACRO mini-conference, where he gives a talk on our measurements of the soliton-to-droplet crossover in attractive Bose-Bose mixtures.
07/09/2016
Julio is this week in Bonn, attending the Greenhorn meeting 2016 where he gives his very first scientific talk! For this occasion, he presents our experiments on interactions, solitons and droplets in potassium Bose-Bose mixtures.
31/08/2016
Luca is these days in beautiful Salerno, attending the BEC2016 conference. He also presents a poster on our latest results on the soliton-to-droplet crossover in attractive Bose-Bose mixtures.
30/08/2016
Vincent finishes today his Master 1 internship project, during which he set up a magnetometer exploiting Faraday rotation in a cell of potassium atoms. We hope you enjoyed your stay here as much as we did, and wish you all the best for the next steps!
24/07/2016
Pierrick is this week in Seoul, attending ICAP 2016. Besides listening to fantastic talks, he also presents a poster on our initial results on the beyond-mean-field stabilization in attractive Bose-Bose mixtures.
11/07/2016
Eugene Demler (Harvard) visits us today, and gives a talk at ICFO on Bose and Fermi polarons. Discussing with Eugene is as always very inspiring.
27/06/2016
Iñigo Urtiaga joins the group as ICFO summer fellow, and will work on the generation of flexible trapping potentials for our BECs using a digital micro-mirror device. Welcome to the group, Iñigo!
21/06/2016
Today we get the first phase contrast images of 41K and 39K BECs taken with the new objective!
20/06/2016
Pierrick is this week in Paris, where he presents our work in the workshop Dynamics and Transport in Quantum Gases at the University of Cergy-Pontoise.
17/06/2016
QGE in El País! And it’s a great group picture, isn’t it?
10/06/2016
First trials of dual gray molasses on the D1 transition, cooling simultaneously 41K and 39K.
05/06/2016
First in situ images with the new objective. It works!
30/05/2016
We install today our homemade objective on the machine. Thanks to Julio’s extensive preparation work, everything goes very smoothly. Next step: imaging!
19/05/2016
Today is the Spanish Royal Physical Society Award Ceremony, where Leticia receives the young experimental physics prize. One of the nicest things in the evening is certainly to meet again several of the first year UCM physics professors.
09/05/2016
César is this week in Bad Honnef, participating in the Quo Vadis BEC conference. Besides attending all the nice talks, he also presents our work on dual BECs and Feshbach spectroscopy in his poster.
14/04/2016
Luca is this week in Palma de Mallorca, where he presents our work on dual 41K and 39K BECs in the annual ICE conference (meeting of the quantum tecnologies and quantum information network in Spain).
22/03/2016
Celebrating Vincent’s arrival in the group’s favourite japanese restaurant.
21/03/2016
Vincent Brunaud joins the group to do his third year internhip from Ecole Polytechnique, and will develop a magnetometer using potassium atoms. Welcome to the group, Vincent!
17/03/2016
Pierrick and Cesar give an inventor crash course to other ICFOnians within the ICFO+ program.
29/02/2016
Pierrick is today in Toulouse, where he gives a talk presenting our experimental apparatus and future plans.
18/02/2016
We (finally!) see Rabi oscillations between different Zeeman sublevels of potassium.
05/02/2016
We organize at ICFO the half day meeting on cold atoms in the Barcelona region 2016. Our annual meeting is a great occasion to keep up with the research lines of the quantum gases groups at UB, UAB, UPC and ICFO. This year César gives a talk and Julio presents a poster on our latest experimental results.
03/02/2016
Observing a new s-wave Feshbach resonance in the 39K-41K mixture.
22/01/2016
Today we observe for the first time the miscible-immiscible transition in a 39K-41K mixture! Also, Leticia is awarded the young experimental physics prize of the Spanish Physical Society.
21/01/2016
Celebrating the new 39K BEC, the fat 41K one (ultra-pure with 250000 atoms) and the new 39K-41K degenerate mixture in a Greek restaurant.
18/01/2016
Dual BEC of 39K and 41K! We produce for the first time this degenerate Bose-Bose mixture. Now, we just need to make the BECs grow…
15/01/2016
First 39K BEC!!! Sympathetic cooling of 39K by evaporation of 41K to quantum degeneracy works! Not too bad to start 2016.
24/12/2015
QGE group season’s greetings: Feliz Navidad y Próspero 2016!
During 2015 we worked on cooling down all potassium isotopes: 41K (BEC Christmas tree), 39K and 40K (red MOT balls and white snow MOT balls respectively).
14/12/2015
QGE Christmas dinner 2015.
07/12/2015
Our brand new dipole trap works, and we get nice 41K BECs in it.
27/11/2015
César and Pierrick present our research to all ICFOnians with a poster and a talk during the ICFO day, and César is awarded the poster prize. Congratulations!
17/11/2015
39K in |1,1> in the crossed dipole trap.
12/11/2015
Today we get for the first time sympathetic cooling of 39K atoms by radio-frequency evaporation of 41K in the magnetic trap, and load up to 2×106 39K and 4×106 41K atoms in the crossed dipole trap!
10/11/2015
First 39K atoms in the magnetic trap.
03/11/2015
First two-isotope MOT! Cooling and trapping simultaneously 39K and 41K works!
02/11/2015
Julio starts officially today his PhD training period in the group. Welcome back, Julio!
27/10/2015
Jordi successfully defends today his bachelor thesis (TFG for the UPC degrees of Physics and Telecomunication engineering) entitled “Design and construction of optical superlattices for a quantum gas experiment”, and is awarded an excellent 9.8/10 grade. Well done, Jordi! It was a pleasure working with you during the last year, and we wish you all the best for your Master in Zurich!
Afterwards, we go to Bill Phillips’ general public talk “Time, Einstein, and the coolest stuff in the universe…” in La Pedrera. We were already convinced that ultracold is ultracool and ultrafun, but after two hours of playing with balloons, magnets, liquid nitrogen and even an explosion, hopefully the complete audience agrees with us.
25/10/2015
Our BEC is back! After six bad weeks, during which we had to replace a leaky vacuum viewport in the 2D MOT chamber, we recover a nice BEC of more than 100000 41K atoms.
22/10/2015
ICFO organizes a symposium to celebrate the birthdays of Roy Glauber and Maciej Lewenstein. We enjoy a lot the two days of great talks and meet many friends and colleagues. It is particularly fun to show the lab to Tilman Esslinger and see again most of the former members of the QOT group.
25/09/2015
Leticia writes together with Alessio Celi a Perspective article in Science commenting on the recent NIST and LENS experiments which visualize edge currents using synthetic gauge fields in synthetic dimensions.
16/09/2105
Cesar defends successfully today his thesis proposal in front of a committee formed by Selim Jochim (University of Heidelberg), Maciej Lewenstein and Robert Sewell (ICFO). We have very inspiring discussions with Selim on his bottom-up approach to quantum magnetism, and some fun showing him the lab.
14/09/2015
Julio spends two weeks in Les Houches, attending the Cold Atoms PreDoc School “Exploring new quantum gases”. He presents a poster, and Leticia gives a series of lectures during the second week on Fermi gases in optical lattices. Great training to start a PhD thesis in the best conditions!
10/09/2015
Julio defends successfully today his master thesis entitled “Design and construction of a fluorescence imaging system for a quantum gas experiment” and is awarded the best possible grade (Matrícula de Honor). Well done, Julio!
05/09/2015
Pierrick and Leticia attend this week the BEC 2015 – Frontiers in Quantum Gases conference in Sant Feliu de Guixols. This year, besides all the inspiring talks and discussions, there is also a special celebration for the 20 years of the first observation of BEC.
31/08/2015
Luca and Leticia attend this week a cool workshop in Dresden on Synthetic Quantum Magnetism. Luca presents a poster describing our experimental apparatus and future plans, and Leticia gives a talk on the Zurich spin correlation experiments.
31/07/2015
Leticia is this week in Glasgow, where she gives a series of lectures at the 71st Scottish Universities Summer School in Physics. It is a great opportunity to visit the fermionic quantum microscope lab of Stefan Kuhr, learn about the physics that is going on in Andrew Daley’s group and discover the atomic interferometry and super cool miniature MOTs that are developed at Strathclyde.
20/07/2015
Jordi appears today in La Vanguardia, in a focus article on the UPC Physics Engineering studies, and explains in a few words what BEC is for the general public.
18/07/2015
The crossed dipole trap finally works nicely.
16/07/2015
Cesar gets today the pneumatically actuated mirror mounts for the MOT installed and working well.
02/07/2015
Leticia is in Les Houches, where she gives a seminar in the Statistical Physics Predoctoral School.
22/06/2015
Conference week: Pierrick is in Trento, attending the Cold Atoms Meet High Energy Physics workshop, whereas Leticia is in Warsaw, where she gives a keynote talk at the Quantum Technologies VI conference.
15/06/2015
Heading to fermions: today we see our first 40K MOT!
08/06/2015
Group dinner in a Japanese restaurant to celebrate our first BEC and, as one can see from Julio’s T-shirt, the Barça victory in the Champions League.
04/06/2015
We have a BEC!!!
The first Spanish condensate was born today at 20h20. When pure, it has about 15000 41K atoms at 20 nK. Ultracold is ultracool!
29/05/2015
It is getting colder and colder in lab 002: we now have more that one million atoms at 1 uK in the optical dipole trap!
22/05/2015
Today we see first atoms in the optical dipole trap.
20/05/2015
Today we get PSD=2.5×10-5
19/05/2015
Our first phase-space density measurement: PSD=10-6 after loading in the quadrupole trap
We do first trials of RF evaporation.
18/05/2015
Testing vacuum: we have >4 min lifetime in the magnetic trap!!!
We also get our lowest temperature to date: 16 uK after D1 gray molasses, with > 109 atoms.
15/05/2015
Optical pumping and first atoms in the quadrupole trap!
08/05/2015
Leticia is today in Zaragoza, where she gives a talk in the condensed matter seminar series. It is really interesting to learn about their circuit-QED research there, both from the theoretical and the experimental point of view.
30/04/2015
First trials of sub-Doppler cooling with gray molasses.
25/04/2015
Our CMOT works!
24/04/2015
Today we make our first really large 41K MOTs.
20/04/2015
Cesar is this week in Zurich attending the YAO (Young Atom Opticians) conference, where he also presents a poster on our experimental status.
31/03/2015
The bottom Bitter coil assembly is installed on the experiment. All our magnetic field coils are mounted now, so we are ready for experiments. Also, today is Lisa’s last day in the group. It was great having you all those last months, good luck with the future!
30/03/2015
The imaging test setup, with the complete lens tube, works. Well done, Lisa!
19/03/2015
We successfully install the top Bitter coil assembly on the science chamber!
18/03/2015
Many interesting talks and visits this week at ICFO thanks to the annual meeting of the SIQS FET project. Nice occasion to meet friends and learn about latest advances in the field.
11/03/2015
Nathan Goldman and Alexandre Dauphin visit this week the QOT group. Great talks on topological systems!
02/03/2015
We are participating in the quantum simulation FET collaborative project QUIC – QUantum Insulators and Conductors- together with groups at LENS, Institut d’Optique, ETH Zurich, University of Trento, Jagiellonian University and of course ICFO.
27/02/2015
Tarik Yefsah (MIT) visits us in his way back from Benasque. It is fun to see him again, chat about solitons and remember the ENS times.
16/02/2015
Jordi Sastre starts today his bachelor thesis (proyecto de fin de grado) project in the group, on the construction of our optical lattice setup. Welcome back to the QGE, Jordi!
Also, we finally observe the fluorescence of the atomic beam from the 2D MOT. Our longitudinal molasses cooling really works!
09/02/2015
Leticia visits Henning Moritz’s group in Hamburg. It is great to see their fully built lithium machine, to discuss physics and technology, and of course to meet again old friends. Thanks also to the Sengstock group for the labtours.
06/02/2015
Imaging smaller and smaller objects with Lisa’s test imaging setup. Current record: seeing element 9-3 of the USAF 1951 test target.
05/02/2015
Pierrick is awarded a Marie Curie fellowship. Congratulations!
31/01/2015
ICFO ski weekend in Andorra, attended by almost all the QGE group. Awesome snow conditions and a lot of fun!
30/01/2015
The complete group attends the annual Cold Atoms in Barcelona meeting at UAB, where all BEC-related groups in the region present their current research. Pierrick gives a talk on our experimental progress, and Cesar presents a poster. It is a great opportunity to get to know each other better, and learn about what’s going on in the other teams.
23/01/2015
First absorption images.
21/01/2015
Leticia goes to the Netherlands, to the FOM Physics meeting in Veldhoven. It is a great occasion to visit as well Florian Schreck’s super cool new labs in Amsterdam, and learn about Strontium.
07/01/2015
First 41K 2D and 3D MOTs.
25/12/2014
QGE group season’s greetings: Feliz Navidad y Próspero 2015!
First potassium MOTs in our apparatus: in the science chamber (star) and in the 2D MOT chamber (tail).
19/12/2014
First MOT in the science chamber of our apparatus! We trap our first cold atoms in there just a few minutes before going to ICFO’s Christmas dinner. There we really have something to celebrate! Exciting times are waiting for us after the Christmas break. Happy holidays to everyone!!!
16/12/2014
Today we see our first 2D and 3D MOTs, just in time for Christmas!!! By adding a pair of coils in the longitudinal direction, we make a 3D MOT of 39K in the 2D MOT chamber. Switching off these coils allows us to image a few minutes later our first 2D MOT as well. Really easy!
26/11/2014
Leticia is awarded one of the five fellowships of the 2014 L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women In Science Spanish program. Maybe this will boost parity in our group in the long term? For the moment, it will certainly boost Lisa’s imaging project!
18/11/2014
We also see potassium fluorescence in the 2D MOT chamber today. Hunting for a 2D MOT in progress…
17/11/2014
Leticia is in Madrid today, in Emilio Alba’s PhD defense at UCM. Congratulations, Dr. Alba!
12/11/2014
Leticia is in Bordeaux for a couple of days, in a workshop on Dirac and Topological Matter organized by Jérôme Cayssol. A very nice occasion to present our ETH experiments, learn more on the topic from a solid-state perspective, meet again the Bordeaux colleagues and see the progress of LP2N.
10/11/2014
Seeing potassium absorption in the 2D MOT chamber. Yes, there is really potassium in there.
06/11/2014
Group dinner in Leticia’s place. We have to celebrate that we are really a potassium team now.
05/11/2014
Today we break the potassium ampoule inside the 2D MOT chamber!
03/11/2014
Luca Tanzi joins the group as a postdoc. Welcome to the group, Luca!
Also, we obtain funding from the BBVA Foundation to develop further our imaging system. Cool!
19/10/2014
We finish today the chamber bake-out!
06/10/2014
Leticia is this week in Benasque, teaching in a Quantum Optics and Non-linear Optics School of the Optics Section of the Spanish Physical Society, organized by Germán de Valcárcel and Verónica Ahufinger.
01/10/2014
Julio Sanz joins the group as a master student. Besides working on the experiment, he will do as well a theory project with Pietro Massignan on the Bose polaron, to prepare possible experiments. Welcome to the group, Julio!
19/09/2014
Today we finish assembling the viewports of the vacuum chamber. In the pictures one can see the machine in its final configuration.
12/09/2014
Farewell futbolin and tapas with Manel, who leaves us today after the end of his Master thesis. It was great having you in the group, and we all wish you a lot of good luck for your new Yb adventure in Paris!
09/09/2014
Manel successfully defends today his master thesis “An experimental setup for gray molasses sub-Doppler cooling of potassium gases”, being awarded the best possible grade (Matrícula de Honor). Well done, Manel!
08/09/2014
Salvatore Manmana (University of Goettingen) visits us today in his way back from Benasque and presents some of his latests results on the dynamics of strongly correlated 1D fermionic systems.
01/09/2014
Lisa Saemisch joins us for a six-month internship within her Master studies at the University of Bonn. During this time she will work on the design and construction of our imaging system. Welcome to the group, Lisa!
30/08/2014
The chamber is finally back to room temperature. Measured pressure: 5×10-10 mbar, limited by the detectivity of our hot cathode gauge.
14/08/2014
Chamber during the high temperature bake-out. What animal do you see in there?
04/08/2014
Congratulations to César for being awarded a CONACYT PhD fellowship from Mexico!
01/08/2014
We start baking the main vacuum chamber. Also, today is Vincent’s last day at ICFO. All the best for the future!
31/07/2014
Farewell evening for Vincent, who finishes tomorrow his internship in the group. In his honor we organize the first QGE pétanque game in front of ICFO. For sure it will not be the last one…
29/07/2014
After all the baking we get nice vaccum in our 2D MOT chamber.
25/07/2014
Tasting horchata with fartons at ICFO’s cafeteria. Thanks a lot, Jordi!
18/07/2014
Pierrick builds today the first complete Bitter coil assembly and test both the Feshbach and quadrupole coils with up to 400 A.
16/07/2014
We have finished the assembly of our vacuum system (except for the viewports), which is now ready for the high temperature bakeout.
10/07/2014
Our 2D MOT chamber is finally ready (no leaks) and we start baking it.
07/07/2014
César is this week in Varenna (Italy), attending an ultracool summer school on Quantum Matter at Ultralow Temperatures.
05/07/2014
We start assembling the vacuum chamber today.
01/07/2014
Jordi Sastre (physics and telecomunication engineer student from UPC) joins the group as ICFO Summer Fellow. During the next three months, he will work on the setup of our RF and MW system, as well as on the computer control of the experiment. Welcome to the group, Jordi!
30/06/2014
Leticia is this week in Les Houches (France) where she gives a presentation in the computational physics summer school that Tommaso Roscilde and Markus Holzmann are organizing this summer. It is a great occasion to learn more about numeric methods for strongly correlated systems and meet again former collaborators, as both Corinna Kollath and Lode Pollet are teaching the same week.
26/06/2014
Leticia is in Aarhus (Denmark), attending the conference Cold atoms and beyond organized by Jesper Levinsen and Georg Bruun, and gives a talk on the ETH magnetism experiments. This is a very nice and lively conference, and although it is hard to get there due to airport strikes, it is really worth it!
23/06/2014
Assembling the 2D MOT chamber. Our first indium seals turn out to leak, we need to work a bit more on that…
17/06/2014
Tobias Tiecke (Harvard University) visits ICFO and gives a very cool talk on merging nanophotonics and cold atoms. It is nice to see Tobias again, discuss a bit about physics and show him our lab.
16/06/2014
Today we make use of the ICFO clean room facilities to coat with gold the in vacuum mirror for our 2D MOT. Thanks a lot to the NPL people for the great job!
15/06/2014
Winding the first 2D MOT coil!
13/06/2014
Our first Spanish vacuum! We start slowly, just baking the kapton insulated wire for our RF antennae to check how well our brand new ultrasound bath, pumping stations, gauge, variacs, heating tapes and temperature logger work.
10/06/2014
Alessandro Seri (University of Camerino) visits us and gives an informal presentation on his Master thesis work, on “Two-qubit entanglement by a commercial projector”.
06/06/2014
We get today a second lab for the group! It is great to have more space to test electronics, coils and optics, and also to bake our vacuum chamber.
28/05/2014
Oleksiy Onishchenko (TU Delft) visits us and gives an informal presentation on his Master thesis work in Ronald Hanson group.
20/05/2014
Our YAG laser for the dipole trap arrives today at ICFO!
12/05/2014
Luis Santos (University of Hanover) visits ICFO for two weeks. We have a very interesting discussion on interaction modulated optical lattices, and also enjoy a lot his talk.
30/04/2014
Luca Tanzi (LENS) visits us for two days, and gives a talk on his PhD thesis work: the study of strongly correlated Bose gases in quasi-periodic potentials and the observation of a Bose glass. It is really interesting to learn from Luca about the different phases that arise from the interplay of disorder and interactions, and how to detect them. We are specially impressed by the spectroscopic features that they observe now. We hope that Luca enjoys the visit to the different ICFO cold atom labs, and the long discussions with Maciej’s group. In the evening we go for tapas and drinks in Barceloneta with Pietro and, as always, “Massignan advisor” never fails!
25/04/2014
Leticia is awarded a Marie Curie Career Integration Grant. We of course already have many ideas of equipment that we will get for the experiment with it. In the evening we go for tapas and drinks to celebrate. There are many other things to celebrate as well: the big progress in the laser system and the tapered amplifiers, the coils, Vincent’s arrival… Christine Guerlin (LKB) is visiting for the weekend, and she comes to celebrate with us.
24/04/2014
Georg Brunn (University of Aarhus) visits Pietro Massignan at ICFO today and gives a great talk on the Higgs mode in microtrapped fermionic systems and on quantum hexatic phases. We have a nice discussion with Georg over lunch time.
22/04/2014
Vincent Lienhard joins the group for his ENS Cachan M1 internship, during which he will develop EOMs, a part of the laser system and start preparing our optical dipole trap. Welcome to the group, Vincent!
14/04/2014
Leticia is this week in a workshop organized by OIST at Okinawa (Japan), where she gives an invited talk on fermions in tunable geometry optical lattices. In the poster session we have interesting discussions on unitary Bose-Fermi mixtures and on Bose-Bose mixtures in optical lattices. It is nice to meet former collaborators again: Jing Zhang and Corinna Kollath are also attending the conference.
11/04/2014
Celebrating Leticia’s birthday at ICFO’s cafeteria (one day in advance). Thanks very much to César, Manel and Pierrick for the cake!
08/04/2014
Manel gets his laser locked on the D1 line today. Our four lasers are locked now!
07/04/2014
Lisa Saemisch (University of Bonn) visits ICFO. Lisa will join the group next fall for a 6-month internship, during which she will work on the development of our imaging system.
31/03/2014
ICFO hosts this week YAO, the Young Atom Opticians conference. It is a great opportunity to see what’s going on in most of the European groups in the field. It is also nice to see the newest results of the ETH lattice machine, and the progress of the Bordeaux experiment. Leticia gives a talk, and César presents a poster which is the most voted in the poster competition. Well done, César!
28/03/2014
Our pizza dinner pays off: Pierrick gets today the first Bitter coil prototype working!
26/03/2014
César gets the two offset locks for the cooling and repumping lasers working. All lasers on the D2 transition are stabilized today. In the process, we order our first pizza dinner at ICFO to get some energy and finish the work.
12/03/2014
Sebastian Diehl (University of Innsbruck) visits ICFO and gives a series of lectures on the Keldysh formalism for dissipative quantum systems.
25/02/2014
Francesca Ferlaino (Univeristy of Innsbruck) visits ICFO. As always, it is very nice to see Francesca and chat about life, physics and Erbium with her.
20/02/2014
Alexandre Dauphin (UCM and ULB) visits ICFO this week and gives a talk on the detection of topological order in cold atom systems. It is nice to see Alexandre again and discuss about possible implementations of his proposals on our new setup.
18/02/2014
Today we see our first potassium spectroscopy in the lab! Also, our ETH theory-experiment comparison for the magnetism experiments is accepted in PRL.
12/02/2014
Sören Dörscher (University of Hamburg) visits us and gives a talk on his PhD thesis work: the construction of an Yb BEC and DFG apparatus. We learn a lot on AEL atoms, and also on the physics that is going on in Klaus Sengstock’s group. In the evening we go for dinner in Gotic, do a bit of wine tasting and even have a look at the Barceloneta beach by night.
03/02/2014
Our lab is officially delivered today, the building works being completely finished. We have been getting a nice temperature stability over the last days: about 0.1ºC inside the enclosures of the optical tables. Let’s hope it stays like this forever. Of course, this would not have been possible without the efforts of the ICFO facilities’ team. Thanks a lot for all those months of hard work!
31/01/2014
Leticia goes to Madrid to attend the 6th Madrid meeting on ultracold atoms, and gives a talk on tunable geometry lattices. Now we know not only the cold atom physics that is going on in Barcelona, but also in Madrid. Thanks to Francesca and Belén for the invitation and the great organization!
30/01/2014
Grigori Astrakharchik organizes at UPC a half-day meeting on cold atoms in the Barcelona region. It is a good occasion to present our work and learn about the physics that our neighbors do not only at ICFO, but also at UAB, UB and UPC.
29/01/2014
We take our first group picture. The weather is quite nice, so we go to the beach of Castelldefels for it. According to Pierrick, next time we should bring not only the camera, but also a good photographer. In the afternoon, Pierrick winds our first coil! Many of them will follow…
07/01/2014
César starts officially his PhD training period in our group.
13/12/2013
Carlos Lobo (University of Southampton) visits ICFO and gives a very interesting talk on optical lattices with large scattering length.
03/12/2013
César Cabrera arrives to Barcelona, and will start soon his PhD thesis in the group. Welcome to Spain, César!
02/12/2013
Pau Gómez (LMU Munich) visits us. In the picture, Pau, Pierrick and Leticia eating german Christstollen and cookies in the cafeteria. Thanks, Pau!
20/11/2013
Manel Bosch joins the group as a master student, and will work on the design and construction of a laser system on the D1 line for gray molasses sub-Doppler cooling. Welcome, Manel!
11/11/2013
Invited by Grigori Astrakharchik, Leticia gives a talk at UPC entitled “Engineering synthetic quantum materials with ultracold fermions in a tunable-geometry optical lattice” on the ETH Zurich experiments. Afterwards we brainstorm a bit on possible experiments with isotopic potassium mixtures, as well as on experiments with strongly interacting fermions in shallow optical lattices.
04/11/2013
Pierrick Cheiney joins the group as a postdoc. Welcome, Pierrick!
23/10/2013
The optical tables are installed in the lab!
21/10/2013
The major part of our lab renovation is finished! Now that ICFO’s lab 002 is almost ready, we can start to move in.
02/10/2013
Cesar Cabrera (University of Bonn) visits ICFO and gives a presentation on his Master thesis work in Martin Weitz’s group, where he worked on the generation of optical lattices for photon BECs.
01/10/2013
The comparison of our ETH magnetic correlations experiments in effective 1D chains to theory is now on the arxiv. The DCA simulations done in Matthias Troyer’s group show that our measurements correspond to temperatures below the tunneling in the chains. Our method is thus well adapted to the study of low temperature 1D physics.
30/09/2013
Our optical tables arrive this morning to ICFO!
26/09/2013
Invited by Miguel Angel Martín Delgado, Leticia visits Universidad Complutense de Madrid and gives a talk entitled “Engineering synthetic quantum materials with ultracold fermions in a tunable-geometry optical lattice” on the ETH Zurich experiments. At UCM we have interesting discussions on the influence of dissipation on topological phases. We also talk about detection schemes for edge states, as well as about digital quantum simulation schemes with ions and Rydberg atoms. Going to Madrid is a nice occasion to visit Juanjo García Ripoll and Jordi Mur at CSIC too.
16/09/2013
The week is very busy, with so many participants from the BEC 2013 conference visiting ICFO and presenting (formally or informally) their work: Tarik Berrada (Vienna), Manuele Landini (Florence), Jesper Levinsen (Aarhus), Ludwig Mathey (Hamburg) and Meera Parish (London). Good friends from Zurich times visit Barcelona as well: Kris Baumann (Stanford), Daniel Greif and Renate Landig (ETH Zurich) are here!
07/09/2013
Leticia goes to Sant Feliu de Guixols for the BEC 2013 conference, and presents a poster entitled “Short-range quantum magnetism of ultracold fermions in an optical lattice” on the ETH Zurich work. The hot topic of the conference this year is without any doubt the simulation of artificial gauge fields, and Wolfgang Ketterle presents a very clear introduction to the topic. The Rice results (and our experiments) on magnetism are actively discussed as well. It is great to have so many inspiring discussions, and also to meet again so many good colleagues and friends! We take advantage of the occasion to plan with Tobias Donner, Thomas Uehlinger and Henning Moritz the future developments of Experiment Wizard, with which they do the computer control of the experiments in Zurich and Hamburg, and that we will use in Barcelona. We also discuss with Corinna Kollath, Lei Wang and Matthias Troyer the status of the numerical simulations that they have done for our ETH spin work.
06/09/2013
Henning Moritz (University of Hamburg) visits ICFO in his way to the Sant Feliu BEC 2013 conference. We have endless discussions on basically everything, from air conditioning systems to ion trapping and the physics of 2D Fermi gases. Henning is happy to see the progress of the labworks after all the advice he gave (thanks again!). In the evening we go out for dinner and drinks in Barcelona with Jing and Henning. As Pietro Massignan (ICFO) and Matteo Zaccanti (LENS) join, Fermi polarons are part of our beers’ discussions.
05/09/2013
Jing Zhang (University of Shanxi, China) visits ICFO to give a talk entitled “Experimental study of a spin-orbit coupled degenerate Fermi gas”. It is really nice to see Jing again after all those years and remember the old ENS times. We have many interesting discussions, from non-abelian gauge fields to magnetic field control and optimal coil windings.
30/08/2013
Sebastian Krinner (ETH Zurich) visits Barcelona in his way to a satellite meeting of the BEC 2013 conference on disordered systems. It is a very nice occasion to learn about the most recent progress on the ETH transport experiment.
29/08/2013
Pierrick Cheiney (University of Cambridge) visits ICFO to give a talk entitled “Scattering of matter-waves on a finite size lattice”, on his PhD thesis work in David Guéry-Odelin’s group at the University of Toulouse.
23/08/2013
Laura Corman (ENS Paris) visits ICFO, and also Barcelona for the weekend. In the breaks from our touristic visits of the city we have interesting discussions on her recent experiments in Jean Dalibard’s group on 2D Bose gases in box-like potentials.
05/08/2013
Leticia visits ETH Zurich. Besides taking part on the yearly quantum optics group hike and meeting all the QO people again, it is great to see the recent progress on the four experiments, and especially on the lattice machine! Martin Lebrat presents the status of the EOM technology transfer project as well. Tobias Donner and Tilman Esslinger give great advice and a lot of tips on lab renovation and organization. Thanks a lot, Tobi and Tilman!
01/08/2103
Martin Pototschnig (Caltech) visits ICFO to give a talk on “Interfacing Cold Atoms”. Martin presents the progress done in Jeff Kimble’s group on coupling cold atoms to photonic crystal structures. It is a nice occasion to get to know better the work of Darrick Chang’s group at ICFO on the theoretical proposals for these experiments.
25/07/2013
During the whole week ICFO hosts a summer school on “Frontiers of Quantum Physics and Quantum Information”. Particularly inspiring for our research are the lectures of Ignacio Cirac on Tensor Network Methods, Misha Lukin on CQED with nanophotonic systems and Immanuel Bloch on optical lattices, where he presents the Munich realization of the Harper hamiltonian.
15/07/2013
The QGE group (Quantum Gases Experimental group) website is launched. Thanks a lot to ICFO’s IT unit for their support, and to Romain Pacanowski (Institut d’Optique, Bordeaux) and Thomas Uehlinger (ETH Zurich) for their very good advice!
02/07/2013
Invited by Salvatore Manmana, Leticia visits Götttingen and gives a talk on “Simulating synthetic quantum materials with ultracold fermions in a tunable-geometry optical lattice”. Götttingen is an awesome university city, and it is quite impressive to see the original Hilbert-Raum (not so large after all…), Heisenberg’s office window and the old physics department where quantum mechanics was born. We have interesting discussions on out-of-equilibrium physics, solar cells and multi-orbital lattice models.
24/06/2013
After a lot of planning, our lab renovation works start! ICFO’s lab 002 will be completely remodeled to meet our needs. This includes the installation of a new air conditioning system, temperature stabilized flow boxes and a water cooling circuit. The electricity of the room will be modified as well, to have enough power for our Feshbach coils.
08/06/2013
Leticia goes to CLEO 2013 (San José, USA), and gives an invited presentation on the Quantum Simulators Symposium entitled “Simulating graphene with ultracold fermions in a honeycomb optical lattice”, on the ETH Zurich work. Going to the Bay area is a very nice opportunity to visit the Stanford labs as well, including Mark Kasevich’s and Ben Lev’s experiments. In particular, it is great to see Kris Baumann again, and learn about his work on the Dysprosium machine! In San Francisco, Jason McKeever shows the Entanglement Technologies lab, and their gas sensing prototype using two high-finesse optical cavities. It is exciting to see all this lab technology finally getting industrial applications.
03/06/2013
Leticia moves to Barcelona. The Ultracold Quantum Gases Group at ICFO is born!