Description: Laser cooling, magneto-optical trapping, and evaporative cooling to quantum degeneracy.
Foot leads the Ultracold Quantum Matter group and is one of the two Oxford physics PIs co-leading the AION project at Oxford. His group develops laser-cooled strontium atom sources with the ultranarrow Sr-87 clock transition for large-scale single-photon atom interferometry. Near-term goals include the AION-10, a 10-m baseline vertical atom interferometer currently under construction in the Beecroft Building stairwell, targeting dark matter searches and mid-band gravitational wave detection. Foot's group also studies non-equilibrium 2D quantum gas physics (BKT transition, vortex dynamics) using matter-wave interferometry. AION is linked to MAGIS-100 at Fermilab.
Hadzibabic's group uses homogeneous, box-trapped ultracold atomic Bose gases as a highly controllable platform to study fundamental many-body physics far from equilibrium, including superfluidity, Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless physics, and quantum turbulence.
Hau is renowned for slowing light to bicycle speed and then stopping and coherently storing optical pulses in a Bose-Einstein condensate via electromagnetically induced transparency; her current program extends this quantum-optics platform to couple light-driven photosynthetic proteins with engineered nanostructures, bridging fundamental photon physics and biophysics.
Hobson co-leads the Ultracold Strontium Laboratory within the AION atom-interferometer collaboration, developing squeezed strontium atomic ensembles and quantum-non-demolition measurement techniques to beat the standard quantum limit in long-baseline atom-interferometric searches for dark matter and gravitational waves, alongside a parallel programme on ultra-precise, shock-resistant optical clocks. Actively recruiting postdocs as the group builds out its cold-atom laboratories.
Hogan leads the Stanford effort on MAGIS-100, a 100-meter atom-interferometric gradiometer at Fermilab designed to search for mid-band gravitational waves and ultralight dark matter using laser-cooled strontium atoms in free fall. His group also develops compact cold-atom gravimeters and gradiometers and explores large-momentum-transfer atom optics to push interferometer sensitivity toward tests of general relativity.
Thierry Lahaye (CNRS DR, LCF/IOGS) co-leads the quantum optics atoms group with Browaeys and Ferrier-Barbut. Research: (1) Rydberg atom tweezer arrays for quantum simulation of many-body spin Hamiltonians; (2) dipole-dipole interaction physics with Rydberg atoms; (3) cryogenic tweezer arrays (2000-site rearrangement at 4K, PRApplied 2024). Key architect of Pasqal's quantum computing platform.
Laurat leads the Quantum Networks team at LKB, developing quantum memories and atom-photon interfaces for quantum network applications. Research directions: (1) High-efficiency cold-atom quantum memories β DLCZ-protocol and AFC memories for telecom photons; demonstrating >90% efficiency and multimode operation; quantum cryptography integrating optical quantum memory (arXiv Mar 2025); (2) Waveguide QED β cold atoms coupled to nanofibers and nanophotonic waveguides for super-radiance, photon-bound states, and atom-photon gates; (3) Quantum network protocols β entanglement distribution, quantum repeater segments; part of European Quantum Flagship 'Quantum Internet Alliance'; (4) Hybrid entanglement β continuous-variable and discrete-variable hybrid entanglement for CHSH Bell tests (PRA 2024). Senior IUF member.
Lim is an Advanced Research Fellow jointly responsible for the ultracold eEDM experiment at Imperial. He contributed to demonstrating sub-Doppler laser cooling of YbF to 100 ΞΌK (PRL 2018), the first demonstration of laser cooling of a heavy polar molecule to ultracold temperatures. He now leads development of the lattice eEDM experiment, developing techniques for loading laser-cooled YbF into a 3D optical lattice for precision eEDM measurements with coherence times far exceeding those of the beam experiment.
JΓΆrg MΓΌller's Quantum Metrology group works on next-generation optical atomic clocks and superradiant lasers. Key experiments: cold strontium continuous superradiant laser (subnatural linewidth, pushing beyond traditional clock limitations); microresonator-based frequency combs; ultra-stable optical reference cavities; and cavity QED many-atom systems for clocks and sensing. The group is part of the EU iqClock project targeting operational optical lattice clocks.
Ni's group creates and controls individual molecules at the lowest achievable temperatures, using optical tweezers to study state-resolved ultracold chemical reactions and quantum effects in molecular collisions. Included here as a borderline precision-measurement/quantum-sensing platform (ultracold polar molecules), analogous to the eEDM/ultracold-molecule work elsewhere in the department, though her core emphasis is chemical reaction dynamics rather than device sensing.