Ultracold Strontium

Fig. 1  Our strontium magneto-optical trap.

We study many-body quantum physics with ultracold strontium atoms in optical lattices. Our lab is located at the Max-Planck-Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, in Immanuel Bloch’s Quantum Many-Body Physics Division.

Within the last twenty years, we have witnessed an exciting interaction between precision measurement and many-body physics because the world’s most accurate and precise clocks — operating at the 2 × 10-18 level — are based on fermionic 87Sr trapped in optical lattices. Doing measurements with 18 digits of precision required understanding the interactions between the strontium atoms at an unprecedented level.

Research

We believe that the strontium atom offers many more exciting possibilities to improve our understanding of many-body quantum physics. We are working on

Fig. 2 In-vacuum buildup cavity for optical lattices spanning 1 mm3

References

If you would like to learn more, here is a list of the most relevant review papers related to our work:

  1. I. Bloch, J. Dalibard, and S. Nascimbène
    Quantum simulations with ultracold quantum gases
    Nature Physics
    8
    267
    2012
  2. A. D. Ludlow, M. M. Boyd, J. Ye, E. Peik, and P. O. Schmidt
    Optical atomic clocks
    Reviews of Modern Physics
    87
    637
    2015
  3. A. J. Daley
    Quantum computing and quantum simulation with group-II atoms
    Quantum Information Processing
    10
    865
    2011