Cold atoms & lasers

The group works at the interface of atomic physics, quantum optics, and statistical physics, using laser-cooled and trapped atomic gases as a clean, tunable platform for precision experiments. By cooling atoms to microkelvin and nanokelvin temperatures and confining them in optical and magnetic traps, the lab reaches regimes where quantum statistics, coherence, and collective behaviour dominate over thermal motion, allowing fundamental phenomena to be isolated and measured with high control.

A central theme is the coherent manipulation of light and matter: the storage and slow propagation of optical pulses in atomic ensembles, the control of atomic coherence and dephasing, and the engineering of disorder and complex geometries in which to study transport, localization, and thermalization. In parallel, the group studies the physics of coupled laser arrays, where ideas from statistical physics and complex systems are used to phase-lock many lasers and to map hard optimization and many-body problems onto the dynamics of optical networks.