In the past months we have been working on setting up an optical lattice system in the experiment. As a result we have now successfully demonstrated a quantum phase transition for the first time in the Hires lab, when we drove the superfluid to the Mott insulator transition. This is an experiment parallel to the one reported in the classical paper from 2002, when this was first achieved, see https://www.nature.com/articles/415039a.
In the image we see clearly the distinct coherence peaks of a superfluid state, as it is released from the trap and expands in free fall.
(1/11 2017)
With sadness in our hearts we say farewell to the founding PhD student of the Hires lab Romain Müller, who has now served as a postdoc for almost a year. When he arrived to the lab in 2012, it was totally empty. Romains latest construction, the high resolution microscope setup, will be the central tool in our future studies of ultracold quantum systems. Thank you for all your work.
(13/10 2017)
Today, the preprint of our paper on the Alice Challenge and remote optimisation of BEC’s is out on the ArXiv. The pdf can be found here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.02230.
(7/9 2017)
On the 30th of May our experimentalists created a heart shaped atomic cloud in the laboratory. This is achieved using a Digital Micromirror Device (DMD). A laser beam with the shape of a heart is projected into the atomic cloud, and the atoms take the shape of the laser. We send our love out to the cosmos.
(30/5 2017)
Our PhD student Ottó Elíasson, successfully defended his progress report: Dual port Faraday imaging for local magnetometry in tweezer arrays. Jürgen Appel from the University of Copenhagen served as an opponent. Ottó is now formally in the prestigious group of part B PhD students. Congratulations Ottó.
(23/5 2017)
In the months since the end of the Alice we have given our experiment a makeover. Now the high resolution objective for the experiment is in place along with all the optics accompanying it. We hope to see effects of trapping light coming through the objective, on the atoms anytime soon!
(February 2017)
