New states of matter can arise when a system is exposed to a periodic drive, such as by irradiating a solid with light or by mechanically shaking a gas of ultracold atoms. While experiments have validated this method, the target often exhibits a drastically reduced lifetime because it continuously absorbs energy from the drive. Moreover, in systems of bosonic particles the periodic drive can trigger the rapid growth of collective excitations, known as parametric instabilities, which typically decay and result in additional heating. Here, ... more

Renhao Tao, Master student in the Ultracold Molecules lab at the MPQ wins 3rd place, presenting his current research results at this years annual student research conference of the physics faculty (PsRC) at the LMU Munich.

Congratulations Renhao! more

Dr. Bharath Hebbe Madhusudhana and Dr. Cesar Cabrera have been awarded a Marie Skłodowska Curie Individual Fellowship under the Horizon 2020 program.

Congratulations to both! more

In recognition of his exceptional thesis: “Quantum Liquid Droplets in a Mixture of Bose-Einstein Condensates” Cesar Cabrera received the ICFO PhD Thesis award in December 2019 at the ICFO Institute in Spain. more

Elementary particles carry several quantum numbers, such as charge and spin. However, in an ensemble of strongly interacting particles, the emerging degrees of freedom can fundamentally differ from those of the individual constituents. For example, one-dimensional systems are described by independent quasiparticles carrying either spin (spinon) or charge (holon). Here, we report on the dynamical deconfinement of spin and charge excitations in real space after the removal of a particle in Fermi-Hubbard chains of ultracold atoms. more

Some isolated quantum systems with disordered potentials fail to ever reach thermal equilibrium, a phenomenon known as many-body localization (MBL). An outstanding question concerns the stability of this phenomenon. While it is well known that exposing the quantum system to the outside world destroys localization, it is not clear what happens when the MBL system is connected to another small quantum system known as a quantum bath. Does a quantum bath destroy the localization, and if so, how small can that bath be? more

Strongly-interacting gauge theories are extremely challenging to access with conventional numerical techniques. Here, we take a first step towards quantum simulation of gauge theories by implementing a Floquet-based method with two-component ultracold bosons in a double-well potential. For resonant periodic driving at the on-site interaction strength and an appropriate choice of the modulation parameters, the effective Floquet Hamiltonian exhibits Z₂ symmetry.

more