Research | ArQuS Lab

Ytterbium: a resourceful alkaline-earth-like atom

Ytterbium is an alkaline-earth-like atom and features a rich electronic level stucture, offering many advantages over alkali atoms. Diverse optical transitions are available: a broad dipole-allowed transition at 399 nm enables efficient Zeeman slowing and fast laser cooling, a narrow intercombination transition at 556 nm can be leveraged to reach temperatures down to a few µK by Doppler cooling, and an ultra-narrow clock transition can be used for metrological-grade spectroscopy and interferometry. The nuclear spin sub-states of the 1S0 ground and 3P0 clock states are ideal for encoding quantum information, owing to their weak sensitivity to external magnetic and electric fields, and to their SU(N) collisional symmetry, which increases the flexibility of quantum information and quantum simmulation schemes.

With two novel ytterbium-based quantum platforms, we pursue different research directions in quantum science and technologies, from fundamental few- and many-body physics and quantum simulation to quantum information processing and quantum metrology.

Fermionic quantum simulation experiment (FERMI)

Some of the most puzzling questions in modern physics concern the behavior of many interacting quantum particles. Our research focuses on studying phenomena emerging from the correlated quantum behaviour of fermions using highly controllable artificial quantum matter at ultracold temperatures. We aim at improving our understanding of quantum phases in strongly correlated systems, especially out of the equilibrium where numerical calculations are extremely challenging even with the most advanced computation techniques. We are especially interested in quantum impurity physics, quantum transport, and correlated multi-orbital systems. By embedding a controllable quantum impurity in a many-particle environment and observing the resulting dynamics at the level of individual atoms, we explore problems that bridge concepts from condensed-matter physics and quantum information theory. By preparing and manipulating individual impurities within a fermionic bath, we can investigate how it interacts and how it modifies the surrounding quantum medium, and how correlations develop over space and time.

The experiment is supported by the ERC Starting Grant OrbiDynaMIQs (GA n. 949438), the MUR FARE grant FastOrbit (MUR Prot.~R20WNHFNKF), the EU Quantum Flagship PASQuanS2.1 (GA n. 101113690), the Next Generation EU PNRR project PE0000023-NQSTI, the MUR PRIN 2022 project CoQuS (MUR Prot.~2022ATM8FY) and the Friuli Venezia-Giulia projects QUASAR-FVG.

FERMI team: Sara Sbernardori, Antonino Vardé, Riccardo Forti, Riccardo Panza, Francesca Orsi, Maxime Allemand, Matteo Marinelli, Francesco Scazza (PI)

Tweezer-cavity experiment (QUICS)

We are developing a modular architecture based on the unique capabilities of Yb-171 atoms trapped in optical tweezer arrays. The experiment's main features are uninterrupted operations through a dual-chamber setup with a physically separate vacuum chamber for the 3D MOT, programmable qubit control with optical tweezers, and a cavity-tweezer interface for atom-photon entanglement generation.

The experiment is supported by the MUR FIS Starting grant TRIC, the Next Generation EU PNRR project PE0000023-NQSTI, the Friuli Venezia-Giulia projects EQUIP-FVG and Q-Connect FVG.

QUICS team: Christian Kodarin, Shashank Suman, Alessia Carrer, Francesca Orsi, Francesco Scazza, Matteo Marinelli (PI)

Research themes

Our research navigates three closely connected themes

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.