We have successfully finished setting up the main infrastructure and the main experimental setup. Central to the experimental apparatus is an UHV vacuum chamber with a science cell that is fully made of glass for high-resolution imaging. First, atoms leaving a commercial oven enter a Zeeman slower region to reduce their longitudinal velocity. In a second stage die atomic beam is collimated by a 2D magneto-optical trap which further redirects the atomic beam towards the science chamber. Here, the atoms are cooled in a magneto-optical trap on the intercombination line at 556nm before loading them into a 3D clock-magic optical lattice. In oder to cool the atoms to the absolute ground state on each lattice site, we employ sideband cooling on the ultranarrow optical clock transition (publication in preparation). Using this scheme we reach final temperatures without any discernible thermal excitation along both horizontal lattice axes. A key ingredient for the novel hybrid lattice-tweezer quantum simulator is local state-dependent control. To this end, we have realized optical tweezer arrays and performed precise measurements of the ground- and excited-state tune-out wavelength, which resulted in one peer-reviewed publication (Phys. Rev. A 108, 053325 (2023)) and one preprint (arXiv:2412.14163). In parallel, we have devised a scheme for the realization of lattice gauge theories based on our experimental platform (PRX Quantum 4, 020330 (2023)). Moreover, we have presented our scientific results at numerous conferences and workshops, most notably at interdisciplinary ones at the interface of quantum simulation and high-energy physics (June 2022: ECT workshop, Trento; July 2022: ICAP2022, Toronto; Nov 2022: QMEL2022, Mainz; April 23: Toward Quantum Advantage in High Energy Physics, Garching near Munich; June 23: ICOLS 2023, Estes Park; Feb 24: ICTP workshop, Trieste; Sept 24: QuantHEP conference, Munich).
