Descrizione del progetto
Acquisire nuove conoscenze sulla fisica dei bosoni ultrafreddi
I gas atomici raffreddati a temperature bassissime di pochi nanokelvin sopra lo zero assoluto offrono una piattaforma eccezionale per approfondire i fenomeni quantistici in sistemi a molti corpi. La capacità di controllare le interazioni tra i gas atomici ultrafreddi associata a tecniche quali le trappole ottiche consente agli scienziati di studiare una serie di fenomeni di fisica a molti corpi in condizioni controllate. Il progetto CriticalBoseBox, finanziato dall’UE, creerà un condensato di Bose-Einstein (bosoni ultrafreddi) in una trappola ottica per studiare in via sperimentale il comportamento critico di tale gas vicino alla sua temperatura di condensazione. I risultati del progetto collocheranno l’Europa in una posizione preminente nella ricerca della fisica atomica e dell’ottica quantistica.
Obiettivo
Studies of homogeneous quantum gases, trapped in uniform optical-box potentials, bridge the fields of ultracold atoms and condensed matter physics. Being versatile and well-isolated systems, ultracold atoms offer an outstanding platform for engineering quantum many-body systems. Due to the variety of high precision measurement techniques from atomic physics, they can be used as analogue quantum simulators for addressing open questions in the physics of strongly correlated systems.
This proposal suggests using ultracold bosons with tuneable interactions and trapped in uniform box potentials to experimentally study the critical behaviour of a Bose gas near its condensation temperature Tc. The project focuses on problems in beyond-mean-field physics that cannot be effectively tackled using the traditionally studied harmonically trapped gas. One key objective is the first measurement of the long-debated non-perturbative Tc shift due to interactions, which is a sensitive probe of the critical behaviour happening on all length scales. In addition, the project addresses critical scalings near Tc, which will be investigated through equilibrium and non-equilibrium measurements. In particular, experimental access to the critical slowing down of equilibration near Tc should allow a direct measurement of the dynamical critical exponent z, which is not possible with liquid helium. The proposed experiments will cover the full range of interaction strengths from non-interacting atoms to the largely unexplored unitary regime, where the interactions are as strong as allowed by quantum mechanics. This will also allow a study of the effect of the interaction strength on the size of the critical region and on the robustness of the universal critical behaviour.
This proposal stands at the forefront of the field of quantum simulation and its results should have an impact beyond the atomic physics and quantum optics communities, strongly reinforcing European excellence in physics.
Campo scientifico
Parole chiave
Programma(i)
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinatore
CB2 1TN Cambridge
Regno Unito