"Cold atoms: A wonderful platform for quantum physics"

by Prof. Hanns-Christoph Nägerl (University of Innsbruck, Austria)

Wednesday 22 Apr 2026, 16:00 → 17:00 Europe/London

Large lecture theatre (Poynting Physics)

Since the formation of atomic Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) about 30 years ago, systems of cold atoms have developed into a versatile playground for the investigation into quantum many-body physics, with the promise to shed light onto dynamical processes in the spirit of quantum simulation efforts. With exquisite parameter control and a broad range of detection methods, a multitude of phenomena, ranging from superfluidity and quantum phase transitions to supersolidity and quantum transport, can be probed with high precision. I will give a broad introduction to the field of cold atoms and its techniques, and then turn to a selected set of experiments from my group that address various dynamical quantum many-body phenomena such as dynamical localization in 1D [1] and, surprisingly, also in 3D [2], anyonization of bosons [3], fractional Fermi seas [4], Bethe strings [5] and dissipationless flow beyond the Landau paradigm [6].

[1] Observation of many-body dynamical localization, Y. Guo et al., Science 389, 716 (2025).

[2] Interaction-enabled metal-insulator phase transition in a driven quantum gas, C. Cantillano et al., manuscript in preparation.

[3] Anyonization of bosons, S. Dhar et al., Nature 642, 53 (2025).

[4] Realization of fractional Fermi seas, Yi Zeng et al, preprint at arXiv:2602.17657 (2026).

[5] Observing Bethe strings in an attractive Bose gas far from equilibrium, M. Horvath et al., arXiv:2505.10550 (2025).

[6] Observing dissipationless flow of an impurity in a strongly repulsive quantum fluid, M. Horvath et al., arXiv:2602.12320 (2026).