Francesca Ferlaino

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Francesca Ferlaino (born 1977) is an Italian-Austrian experimental physicist known for her research on quantum matter. She is a professor of physics at the University of Innsbruck. [1] [2]

Contents

Biography

Francesca Ferlaino was born in Naples, Italy. She studied physics at the University of Naples Federico II (1995–2000) and was an undergraduate research fellow at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste (1999–2000). She did a PhD in physics at the University of Florence and the European Laboratory for Non-Linear Spectroscopy (LENS) (2001–2004). In 2007 she moved to the University of Innsbruck, Austria, where she was a research and teaching associate and started her own research group. In 2014 she became a professor of physics at the University of Innsbruck and research director at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. [3]

Work

Her research activity explores quantum phenomena in atomic gases at ultralow temperatures with contributions spanning topics including quantum matter of atoms and molecules and few-body and scattering physics. Over the last years, she focuses specifically on the strongly magnetic, and rather unexplored, Erbium and Dysprosium atomic species, realizing in 2012 world's first Bose-Einstein condensation of Erbium, [4] and in 2018 the first dipolar quantum mixture of Erbium and Dysprosium. [5] In 2019, she was able to prepare the first long-lived supersolid state, an elusive and paradoxical state where superfluid flow and crystal rigidity coexist. [6] With these systems, she has explored a variety of many-body quantum phenomena dictated by the long-range and anisotropic dipolar interaction among the atoms. In 2021 she created supersolid states along two dimensions. [7] In 2024 her team reported the observation of quantum vortices in the supersolid phase [8] [9]

Awards and fellowships

Her work has earned her multiple awards, including the Grand Prix de Physique "Cécile-DeWitt Morette/École de Physique des Houches" from the French Academy of Sciences (2019), [10] the Junior BEC Award (2019), [11] the Feltrinelli Prize (2017) [12] and the Erwin Schrödinger Prize (2017), [13] the highest award of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. In addition, she is the recipient of an Alexander von Humboldt Professorship (2013), [14] a START-Prize (2009) and three ERC Grants (Starting 2010, Consolidator 2016 and Advanced 2022) [15] She was elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) in 2019, after a nomination from the APS Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, "for ground-breaking experiments on dipolar quantum gases of erbium atoms, including the attainment of quantum degeneracy of bosons and fermions, studies on quantum-chaotical scattering, the formation of quantum droplets, and investigations on the roton spectrum". [16] [17]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dysprosium</span> Chemical element with atomic number 66 (Dy)

Dysprosium is a chemical element; it has symbol Dy and atomic number 66. It is a rare-earth element in the lanthanide series with a metallic silver luster. Dysprosium is never found in nature as a free element, though, like other lanthanides, it is found in various minerals, such as xenotime. Naturally occurring dysprosium is composed of seven isotopes, the most abundant of which is 164Dy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roton</span> Collective excitation in superfluid helium-4 (a quasiparticle)

In theoretical physics, a roton is an elementary excitation, or quasiparticle, seen in superfluid helium-4 and Bose–Einstein condensates with long-range dipolar interactions or spin-orbit coupling. The dispersion relation of elementary excitations in this superfluid shows a linear increase from the origin, but exhibits first a maximum and then a minimum in energy as the momentum increases. Excitations with momenta in the linear region are called phonons; those with momenta close to the minimum are called rotons. Excitations with momenta near the maximum are called maxons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Supersolid</span> State of matter

In condensed matter physics, a supersolid is a spatially ordered material with superfluid properties. In the case of helium-4, it has been conjectured since the 1960s that it might be possible to create a supersolid. Starting from 2017, a definitive proof for the existence of this state was provided by several experiments using atomic Bose–Einstein condensates. The general conditions required for supersolidity to emerge in a certain substance are a topic of ongoing research.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rudolf Grimm</span> Austrian physicist (born 1961)

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spin ice</span>

A spin ice is a magnetic substance that does not have a single minimal-energy state. It has magnetic moments (i.e. "spin") as elementary degrees of freedom which are subject to frustrated interactions. By their nature, these interactions prevent the moments from exhibiting a periodic pattern in their orientation down to a temperature much below the energy scale set by the said interactions. Spin ices show low-temperature properties, residual entropy in particular, closely related to those of common crystalline water ice. The most prominent compounds with such properties are dysprosium titanate (Dy2Ti2O7) and holmium titanate (Ho2Ti2O7). The orientation of the magnetic moments in spin ice resembles the positional organization of hydrogen atoms (more accurately, ionized hydrogen, or protons) in conventional water ice (see figure 1).

The Efimov effect is an effect in the quantum mechanics of few-body systems predicted by the Russian theoretical physicist V. N. Efimov in 1970. Efimov's effect is where three identical bosons interact, with the prediction of an infinite series of excited three-body energy levels when a two-body state is exactly at the dissociation threshold. One corollary is that there exist bound states of three bosons even if the two-particle attraction is too weak to allow two bosons to form a pair. A (three-particle) Efimov state, where the (two-body) sub-systems are unbound, is often depicted symbolically by the Borromean rings. This means that if one of the particles is removed, the remaining two fall apart. In this case, the Efimov state is also called a Borromean state.

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In physics, the super Tonks–Girardeau gas represents an excited quantum gas phase with strong attractive interactions in a one-dimensional spatial geometry.

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References

  1. ↑ "Experimental Physics Innsbruck". University of Innsbruck. Retrieved 26 April 2021.
  2. ↑ "Francesca Ferlaino". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
  3. ↑ "Francesca Ferlaino – Dipolar Quantum Gases". www.erbium.at. Retrieved 26 April 2021.
  4. ↑ Aikawa, K.; Frisch, A.; Mark, M.; Baier, S.; Rietzler, A.; Grimm, R.; Ferlaino, F. (21 May 2012). "Bose-Einstein Condensation of Erbium". Physical Review Letters. 108 (21): 210401. arXiv: 1204.1725 . doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.210401.
  5. ↑ Trautmann, A.; Ilzhöfer, P.; Durastante, G.; Politi, C.; Sohmen, M.; Mark, M. J.; Ferlaino, F. (21 November 2018). "Dipolar Quantum Mixtures of Erbium and Dysprosium Atoms". Physical Review Letters. 121 (21): 213601. arXiv: 1807.07555 . doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.213601.
  6. ↑ Chomaz, L.; Petter, D.; Ilzhöfer, P.; Natale, G.; Trautmann, A.; Politi, C.; Durastante, G.; van Bijnen, R. M. W.; Patscheider, A.; Sohmen, M.; Mark, M. J.; Ferlaino, F. (19 April 2019). "Long-Lived and Transient Supersolid Behaviors in Dipolar Quantum Gases". Physical Review X. 9 (2): 021012. arXiv: 1903.04375 . doi: 10.1103/PhysRevX.9.021012 .
  7. ↑ Norcia, M. A.; Politi, C.; Lauritz, K.; Poli, E.; Sohmen, M.; Mark, M. J.; Bisset, R. N.; Santos, L.; Ferlaino, F. (18 August 2021). "Two-dimensional supersolidity in a dipolar quantum gas". Nature. 596: 357–361. arXiv: 2102.05555 . doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03725-7.
  8. ↑ Casotti, Eva; Poli, Elena; Klaus, Lauritz; Litvinov, Andrea; Ulm, Clemens; Politi, Claudia; Mark, Manfred J.; Bland, Thomas; Ferlaino, Francesca (2024). "Observation of vortices in a dipolar supersolid". Nature. 635: 327–331. arXiv: 2403.18510 . doi:10.1038/s41586-024-08149-7. ISSN   0028-0836.
  9. ↑ Savitsky, Zack (6 November 2024). "Physicists Spot Quantum Tornadoes Twirling in a 'Supersolid'". Quanta Magazine. Retrieved 28 November 2024.
  10. ↑ "Lauréate 2019 du prix Cécile DeWitt-Morette / École de Physique des Houches : Francesca Ferlaino | Lauréats | Prix et médailles | Encourager la vie scientifique". www.academie-sciences.fr. Retrieved 26 April 2021.
  11. ↑ "BEC Award". Bose-Einstein Condensation 2021. 30 September 2020. Archived from the original on 26 April 2021. Retrieved 26 April 2021.
  12. ↑ "Accademia dei Lincei: alla napoletana Francesca Ferlaino il premio Antonio Feltrinelli". www.ilmattino.it (in Italian). 9 November 2017. Retrieved 26 April 2021.
  13. ↑ "Francesca Ferlaino". stipendien.oeaw.ac.at. Archived from the original on 26 April 2021. Retrieved 26 April 2021.
  14. ↑ "Neue Alexander von Humboldt-Professoren ausgewählt – BMBF". Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung – BMBF (in German). Archived from the original on 26 April 2021. Retrieved 26 April 2021.
  15. ↑ "Innsbruck researchers awarded three ERC Advanced Grants". www.uibk.ac.at. Retrieved 25 May 2022.
  16. ↑ "Fellows elected in 2019 from the Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics". APS Fellows archive. American Physical Society. Retrieved 29 April 2021.
  17. ↑ "Francesca Ferlaino elected Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS)". Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften. 9 October 2019. Retrieved 29 April 2021.
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