G. Modugno
Highly excited Rydberg states of lanthanides are a promising, yet largely unexplored, playground for quantum studies. Here, we report on the first high-resolution spectroscopy of 162Dy obtained by two-color trap depletion spectroscopy in a…
We assess experimentally and theoretically the character of the superfluid-supersolid quantum phase transition recently discovered in trapped dipolar quantum gases. We find that one-row supersolids can have already two types of phase…
We investigate sub-Doppler laser cooling of bosonic potassium isotopes, whose small hyperfine splitting has so far prevented cooling below the Doppler temperature. We find instead that the combination of a dark optical molasses scheme that…
We report the experimental realization of a new kind of optical lattice for ultra-cold atoms where arbitrarily large separation between the sites can be achieved without renouncing to the stability of ordinary lattices. Two collinear…
A key manifestation of superfluidity in liquids and gases is a reduction of the moment of inertia under slow rotations. Non-classical rotational effects have been searched for a long time also for the elusive supersolid phase of matter, in…
The existence of a paradoxical supersolid phase of matter, possessing the apparently incompatible properties of crystalline order and superfluidity, was predicted 50 years ago. Solid helium was the natural candidate, but there supersolidity…
We produce Bose-Einstein condensates of $^{162}$Dy atoms employing an innovative technique based on a resonator-enhanced optical trap that allows efficient loading from the magneto-optical trap and fast evaporation. We characterize the…
Self-bound quantum droplets are a newly discovered phase in the context of ultracold atoms. In this work we report their experimental realization following the original proposal by Petrov [Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 155302 (2015)], using an…
In the domain of quantum degenerate atomic gases, much interest has been raised recently by the use of Lanthanide atoms with large magnetic moments, in particular Dysprosium and Erbium. These species have been successfully brought to…
We explore the interplay between tunneling and interatomic interactions in the dynamics of a bosonic Josephson junction. We tune the scattering length of an atomic $^{39}$K Bose-Einstein condensate confined in a double-well trap to…
Symmetry-breaking quantum phase transitions play a key role in several condensed matter, cosmology and nuclear physics theoretical models. Its observation in real systems is often hampered by finite temperatures and limited control of the…
We study the time-evolution of the scissors mode of a Bose-Einstein condensate during the ballistic expansion after release from the magnetic trap. We show that despite the nontrivial character of the superfluid expansion, the sinusoidal…
We investigate the superfluid-insulator transition of one-dimensional interacting Bosons in both deep and shallow periodic potentials. We compare a theoretical analysis based on Monte-Carlo simulations in continuum space and Luttinger…
We study the transport dynamics of matter-waves in the presence of disorder and nonlinearity. An atomic Bose-Einstein condensate that is localized in a quasiperiodic lattice in the absence of atom-atom interaction shows instead a slow…
One of the most intriguing phenomena in physics is the localization of waves in disordered media. This phenomenon was originally predicted by Anderson, fifty years ago, in the context of transport of electrons in crystals. Anderson…
Disorder, noise and interaction play a crucial role in the transport properties of real systems, but they are typically hard to control and study both theoretically and experimentally, especially in the quantum case. Here we explore a…
One of the most important issues in disordered systems is the interplay of the disorder and repulsive interactions. Several recent experimental advances on this topic have been made with ultracold atoms, in particular the observation of…
Clarifying the interplay of interactions and disorder is fundamental to the understanding of many quantum systems, including superfluid helium in porous media, granular and thin-film superconductors, and light propagating in disordered…
We produce a Bose-Einstein condensate of 39-K atoms. Condensation of this species with naturally small and negative scattering length is achieved by a combination of sympathetic cooling with 87-Rb and direct evaporation, exploiting the…
We investigate magnetic Feshbach resonances in two different ultracold K-Rb mixtures. Information on the K(39)-Rb(87) isotopic pair is combined with novel and pre-existing observations of resonance patterns for K(40)-Rb(87). Interisotope…