News

Thirty years of Bose–Einstein condensation

1 December 2025

It was 30 years ago that the first BECs were created in alkali atoms. This was not only the culmination of decades of work and development, for instance in laser cooling, but was the beginning of our exciting and still-growing field! We congratulate and celebrate in this News & Views for Nature: Nature 647 , 860-861 (...

Fractal transport in quasiperiodic lattice

PRX Quantum: Quantized Transport in Disordered Systems Without Gaps

28 June 2025

Topology in condensed matter physics refers to global properties of a system’s quantum states that remain stable under continuous deformations, like stretching or bending — but not tearing. Unlike conventional phases of matter, topological phases are protected by more abstract, global properties, such as Chern numbers...

Nature: Observing the 2D Bose glass

13 September 2024

Our work on observing the 2D Bose glass in our optical quasicrystal has been published in Nature: Observing the two-dimensional Bose glass in an optical quasicrystal Jr-Chiun Yu, Shaurya Bhave, Lee reeve, Bo Song, Ulrich Schneider Nature 633 , 338–343 (2024). Press release on the Department of Physics Webpage : Physicists...

Individual tunnelling control in optical lattices

9 September 2024

Optical lattices are power quantum simulators with many applications in e.g. strongly-correlated and topological systems. However, up to now, they were limited in programmability since typically all tunnelling links were of the same strength. In this new paper, we show theoretically how local control over individual...

Cold atoms and molecules for fundamental physics Conference

1 August 2024

Last week we had the pleasure of hosting 85 scientists for our ICAP satellite conference on Cold Atoms and Molecules for Fundamental Physics in Cambridge. Many thanks to all the speakers, poster presenters and participants for 3 days of inspiring discussions! Cold atoms and molecules for fundamental physics - ICAP satellite

IOP Joseph Thomson Medal

22 December 2023

Professor Ulrich Schneider received the IOP 2023 Joseph Thomson Medal and Prize for groundbreaking experiments on the collective dynamics of quantum gases in optical lattices, including fundamental studies of localization effects in both disordered and quasicrystalline systems. More information at: https://www.iop.org/...

Postdoc Positions available

1 July 2023

We have two experimental postdoc opportunities on many-body physics in Optical Quasicrystals and on being part of the UK Quantum Technology Hub and developing optical optical-lattice and tweezer-based Quantum Simulators . More information at: https://www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/41624/ Applications close on 15/8/23.

Observing the two-dimensional Bose glass in an optical quasicrystal

2 March 2023

Our latest work on observing the two-dimensional Bose glass in our optical quasicrystal is now on the Arxiv: Arxiv:2303.00737 . We could not only observe the Bose glass and the phase transition between Bose glass and superfluid, but could furthermore experimentally establish the non-ergodic character of the Bose glass...

Hubbard Models for Quasicrystalline Potentials

13 October 2022

Our latest work on creating Hubbard Models for Quasicrystalline Potentials is now on the Arxiv (2210.05691). In it, we present a numerical method for constructing the Hubbard Hamiltonian of non-periodic potentials without making use of Bloch's theorem, and then apply it to the eightfold rotationally symmetric 2D optical...

AION Vacuum system arrived

4 July 2022

The AION experiment reached an important first milestone with the UHV vacuum chamber having been delivered. Next stop: laser cooled Strontium. aion_uhv_chamber.jpg