QUROPE Quantum Information Processing and Communication in Europe

We report on the determination of the dynamical polarizability of ultracold erbium atoms in the ground and in one excited state at three different wavelengths, which are particularly relevant for optical trapping. Our study combines experimental measurements of the light shift and theoretical calculations. In particular, our experimental approach allows us to isolate the different contributions to the polarizability, namely, the isotropic scalar and anisotropic tensor part.

The concept of a roton, a special kind of elementary excitation, forming a minimum of energy at finite momentum, has been essential to understand the properties of superfluid

The Durham Atomic and Molecular Physics group run an interactive activity focussing on optical communications and fibres aimed at primary school children which was part of Durham University's annual "Celebrate Science" fair.

The event was part of the "Saturday morning Physics"-series hosted by the Durham Physics department and featured a talk by Prof. Charles Adams aimed at the general public followed by a series of hands-on demonstrations and labtours.

sing electromagnetically induced transparency and photon storage, the strong dipolar interactions between Rydberg atoms and the resulting dipole blockade can be mapped onto light fields to realise optical non-linearities and interactions at the single photon level. We report on the realisation of an experimental apparatus designed to study interactions between single photons stored as Rydberg excitations in optically trapped microscopic ensembles of ultracold 87Rb atoms.

The strong interaction between individual Rydberg atoms provides a powerful tool exploited in an ever-growing range of applications in quantum information science, quantum simulation and ultracold chemistry. One hallmark of the Rydberg interaction is that both its strength and angular dependence can be fine-tuned with great flexibility by choosing appropriate Rydberg states and applying external electric and magnetic fields.

Dephasing and decay are the intrinsic dissipative processes prevalent in any open quantum system and the dominant mechanisms for the loss of coherence and entanglement. This inadvertent effect not only can be overcome but can even be capitalized on in a dissipative quantum simulation by means of tailored couplings between the quantum system and the environment.

Experiments handling Rydberg atoms near surfaces must necessarily deal with the high sensitivity of Rydberg atoms to (stray) electric fields that typically emanate from adsorbates on the surface. We demonstrate a method to modify and reduce the stray electric field by changing the adsorbates distribution. We use one of the Rydberg excitation lasers to locally affect the adsorbed dipole distribution.

We explore the possibility to trap Rydberg atoms in tightly confining magnetic microtraps. The trapping frequencies for Rydberg atoms are expected to be influenced strongly by magnetic-field gradients. We show that there are regimes where Rydberg atoms can be trapped. Moreover, we show that so-called magic trapping conditions can be found for certain states of rubidium, where both Rydberg atoms and ground-state atoms have the same trapping frequencies. Magic trapping is highly beneficial for implementing quantum gate operations that require long operation times.

The launch of the projects funded within the QuantERA Call 2017 will be officially celebrated at the Projects’ Launch Event in Bucharest, Romania.

The event will take place on: