Several recent experiments performing VUV laser nuclear spectroscopy of Thorium-229 doped into calcium fluoride single crystals allow to probe nuclear properties and host material parameters with unprecedented accuracy. In this talk I will resume our current understanding of the microscopic doping structure, combining theoretical modelling, solid-state techniques like XAFS and RBS, and...
I will describe experiments for precision tests of gravitational physics using quantum devices based on ultracold atoms, namely, atom interferometers. I will report on the measurement of the gravitational constant G, on experiments for gravity measurements at small spatial scales, and on new tests of the Einstein equivalence principle.
Transition energy measurements in heavy, few-electron ions are unique tools to test bound-state quantum electrodynamics (QED) in extremely high Coulomb fields, where perturbative methods cannot be implemented. In such fields, the effects of the quantum vacuum fluctuations on the atomic energies are enhanced by several orders of magnitude with respect to light atoms. However, up to now,...
Supersolids are exotic states of matter that spontaneously break two symmetries: gauge invariance through the phase-locking of the wavefunction, and translational symmetry owing to the emergence of a crystalline structure. In a first part, we report on the theoretical study and experimental observation of vortices in a dipolar supersolid of Dysprosium [1]. When rotated, the supersolid phase...
Crystals of cold trapped ions are a promising platform for quantum technology and for studying the quantum many-body problem as a well-controlled toy many-body system. In modern state-of-the-art experiments, managing the entropy of large Coulomb crystals becomes challenging due to the exponential scaling of the Hilbert space with the number of trapped ions. In particular, as we demonstrate,...
