Research Frontiers in Ultracold Quantum Gases

Since the first experimental realization of Bose-Einstein condensation in ultracold atomic gases in 1995, there have been several substantial breakthroughs. Today, systems of bosonic or fermionic quantum gases allow for a very high level of experimental control concerning all ingredients of the underlying many-body Hamiltonian. The corresponding trapping geometry can be designed to be harmonic, anharmonic or, recently, even box-like, which mimics a quasi-uniform potential. Furthermore, the shape of the two-particle interaction can be modified from the short-ranged and isotropic contact interaction to the long-ranged and anisotropic dipolar interaction. In particular the possibility to tune the strength of the contact interaction to basically any attractive or repulsive value with the aid of the Feshbach resonances allows nowadays to probe quantum fluids in regimes and under conditions hitherto unavailable. Since 2011 it has even been experimentally achieved to also tune the kinetic energy of the many-body Hamiltonian by producing synthetic spin-orbit coupling. This nourishes the prospect to generate for neutral atoms abelian gauge fields, as they appear in electromagnetism for charged particles, but also non-abelian gauge fields, as they occur in the standard model of elementary particle physics. Therefore, quantum gases are considered to be ideal quantum simulators, that is, they are best capable to simulate difficult quantum problems in condensed matter physics and other fields of physics in the sense of Richard Feynman from 1982.

This seminar, which will bring together about 80 participants in December 2018, will provide a comprehensive survey of the different facets of this rapidly evolving subject. Leading international experts will review the present status of the most promising developments concerning ultracold quantum gases from both the experimental and the theoretical point of view, and will discuss future trends and perspectives. Participants are invited to present their current research in three poster sessions. In addition, 6 outstanding contributions will be selected for shorter talks.

Further information can be found at this website