ultra-cold atoms in optical lattices

WHAT ARE THEY?
Recent technological advances have made it possible to optically trap atomic gases at very low temperatures and to implement several models in condensed matter systems. Through simulations of specific Hamiltonians, these systems offer a test-bed to investigate physics that would be otherwise experimentally out of reach. Primary to that, it is crucial to extract relevant information regarding the atomic gas itself and, ideally, one would want to do so without perturbing the state of the atoms significantly. Recently, the use of controllable quantum objects, such as atomic or spin impurities embedded in the gas, which we call quantum probes, has been suggested as a possible way to achieve such a non-destructive read out of the many-body system.
OUR RESEARCH
Our current research focuses on:
  1. Investigating the applicability of a quantum-probe approach in a variety of condensed matter model that can be simulated with ultra-cold atoms in optical lattices.
  2. Finding a link between dynamical features of the impurities, seen as open quantum systems, and properties of the many-body model, such as spectral density, excitation spectrum and correlations.
  3. Designing realistic protocols to access relevant information about the above-mentioned properties.

The long-term aim of this project is to develop a compact and coherent theory of quantum probing by combining tools of open quantum system theory, condensed-matter and quantum field theory. The work is done in collaboration with theoretical and experimental physicists at University of Strathclyde (UK) and University of Oxford (UK)
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
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