Welcome to the Artificial Quantum Systems (ArQuS) laboratory!

We are an experimental research group established in 2022 at the University of Trieste and Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), working at the intersection of quantum many-body physics, quantum simulation and quantum computing with neutral atoms. We develop scalable quantum platforms based on the manipulation and detection of single ytterbium atoms, using high-precision microscopic and spectroscopic manipulation techniques to achieve resolution down to the single-atom level and engineer strongly correlated quantum matter and quantum processors.

Our research spans a broad range of topics in quantum science and technology, from fundamental studies of many-body systems, open quantum systems and quantum optics, to the development of quantum networks and modular quantum computing architectures.

The laboratories are operated through a collaboration between the University of Trieste, the Institute of Optics of the Italian National Research Council (CNR-INO), and the Institute Officina dei Materiali of the Italian National Research Council (CNR-IOM). They are financially supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 and Horizone Europe research and innovation programmes, the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR), the Office of Naval Research Global (ONRG) and by the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia-Giulia (FVG).

ArQuS is part of the growing quantum research community in Trieste, working in close collaboration with CNR, Elettra Sincrotrone, SISSA, ICTP and the wider network of quantum research infrastructures in the FVG region.

News

Latest highlights from the group

July 2026

Matteo Marinelli has been awarded an ONRG research grant to experimentally investigate quantum magic in many-body systems. The project will be carried out in collaboration with the theoretical group of Marcello Dalmonte.

July 2026

Francesca Orsi joins the group as a postdoc. Welcome on board!

July 2026

Our new preprint about long-term laser frequency stabilization through a FPGA-controlled transfer cavity is online!
Read here: arXiv:2606.09720

June 2026

Yuchen Song and Yassine Ferhi join the group as research interns for the summer. Welcome on board!

March 2026

Maxime Allemand joins the group as a postdoc. Welcome on board!

Dec 2025

We obtained our first microscope images with Yb-173 in the continuum, performing free-space ultrafast imaging of atoms held in an optical dipole trap!

Our Research

Find out about our work

Engineering quantum matter from the bottom up

We investigate the correlated behaviour of interacting quantum systems using highly controllable atomic platforms, such as few-atom ensembles, mesoscopic Fermi gases and tweezer-trapped atom arrays.

Quantum impurity problems

We study the problem of individual impurities embedded or localized in a quantum degenerate bath, leveraging single-atom control, quantum gas microscopy and interferometric techniques.

Quantum interconnects and modular computing

We develop a modular quantum processing architecture featuring uninterrupted operations and a quantum interconnect, based on atom-photon entanglement mediated by a high-finesse optical cavity.

The ArQuS Lab is supported by:

Contacts

ArQuS Laboratory
c/o CNR Edificio Q2 - Area Science Park Basovizza
34149 Trieste - IT
Phone: +39 040 375 6415
Email: arquslab (AT) units (DOT) it

Exploring artificial quantum systems atom by atom