BoDy Lab

In the BoDy experiment, we investigate the behavior of quantum gases containing a large number of bosonic dysprosium atoms, typically around 100,000. Bosonic dysprosium exhibits strong magnetic dipole-dipole interactions that compete with conventional contact interactions. This interaction competition gives rise to striking behaviors at the mean-field level and beyond. For instance, it yields novel phases of matter, including ultradilute droplets and supersolids. In BoDy, we aim to explore these behaviors and deepen our understanding of them thanks to our exquisite control and probing capabilities. These include trapping across the dimensional crossover, exquisite dynamical control of the in-plane potential, and sub-micron resolution imaging.

BoDy Theory

Our group also includes a small theory division where we explore the exotic phenomena at play in bosonic dipolar quantum gases from a theoretical standpoint. We are particularly interested in exploring the phase diagram of dipolar gases in confined geometries, including their various supersolid phases, the transition between them, the dynamics accross them, and their excitations. Our work is both numerical and analytical, relying on an extended mean-field treatment.

FerDy Lab

In the FerDy experiment, our goal is to study the behavior of quantum gases of spin-polarized fermionic dysprosium by controlling and detecting the atomic assembly at the single-atom level. Interestingly, unlike most fermionic atoms, spin-polarized dysprosium atoms remain interacting in the ultracold regime. This arises from dysprosium's strong magnetic dipole-dipole interactions. These interactions may induce exotic many-body effects, such as anisotropic fermionic pairing and superfluidity or the interplay of fractional quantum Hall physics and Wigner crystallization. In FerDy, we aim to explore the emergence of these novel behaviors in mesoscopic assemblies at extremely low temperatures trapped in tight tweezers, leveraging our unique detection capabilities.

Lithium-Caesium Lab

We are joining forces with Matthias Weidemueller to explore the physics of quantum atomic mixtures with extreme mass imbalance. Using ultracold gases of Lithium and Caesium, we aim to investigate few- and many-body quantum phenomena arising from the competition of the various inter- and intra-species (contact) interactions at play in the mixture, and their interplay with the different constituent's mobility, quantum statistics, population, as well as the mixture's geometry. Here a special focus is on the physics of heavy impurities in a bath of light quantum degenerate fermions, searching for signature of the Anderson orthogonality catastrophe.