From the group
Research results, awards, thesis defences and other announcements from the group since 2018.
Research highlight 23 January 2026
Quantum gas microscopy reveals a shared temperature scale in spin and charge correlations of the Fermi–Hubbard model.
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Naman Jain successfully defended his PhD thesis, “Assembling fermionic quantum matter atom by atom: a ⁶Li tweezer-array quantum gas microscope.” Congratulations, Naman!
Immanuel Bloch has been awarded the prestigious Wolf Prize for his pioneering research with ultracold atoms.
Norman Yao is spending his sabbatical with us in Munich. Department of Physics, Harvard University.
We are delighted to celebrate Andreas von Haaren's successful PhD defense of his thesis, "A New ⁶Li Quantum Gas Microscope with Hz-Scale Repetition Rate.” Congratulations Andreas on this remarkable achievement! We wish you all the very best and every success in your future endeavors.
We are delighted to celebrate Shrestha Biswas’s successful PhD defense of her thesis, "Double microwave-shielded fermionic polar molecules." We congratulate Shrestha on this outstanding achievement and wish her continued success in her future career.
This year’s group retreat took place at the Haus der bayerischen Landwirtschaft in Herrsching am Ammersee.
Si Wang received a Best Poster Award at Pure and Applied Quantum (PAQ 2026), a satellite conference of the 29th International Conference on Atomic Physics, held in Beijing in June 2026.
Alex receives the prize for his outstanding dissertation entitled “Quantum Gas Microscopy of Interacting Quantum Matter with Artificial Gauge Fields”.
Maximilian Ammenwerth successfully defended his PhD Thesis “Fast Multi-Photon Single-Qubit Operations in Arrays of Strontium Atoms” We warmly congratulate you Maximilian and wish you all the best for your future.
A quantum gas microscope reveals scaling of magnetic and spin–charge correlations in the Fermi–Hubbard model.
Prof. Cheng Chin from the University of Chicago, a Humboldt Research Award winner, visited the Quantum Many-Body Systems Division twice during his sabbatical, from 21 September to 20 October 2025 and from 19 January to 18 March 2026.
The competition between different length scales in quantum many-body systems gives rise to phenomena such as correlated dynamics and nonlocal order.
Robin Eberhard successfully defended his PhD Thesis “Quantum Control and Computing with Neutral ⁸⁸Sr Atoms” We warmly congratulate you Robin and wish you all the best for your future.
Alexander Hesse successfully defended his PhD Thesis “Probing disorder-driven topological phase transitions via topological edge modes in Floquet-engineered honeycomb lattices”. We warmly congratulate you Alexander and wish you all the best for your future.
Petar Bojović has successfully defended his PhD Thesis “Fermi-Hubbard Quantum Gas Microscope: Analog Simulation and Digital Gates”. We warmly congratulate you Petar and wish you all the best for the future.
Renhao Tao has successfully defended his PhD Thesis “Scalable neutral-atom arrays and high-fidelity universal quantum gates on metastable qubits.” Congratulation Renhao! We wish you all the best for the future.
This year, the Award, named after the ancient Chinese philosopher goes to Immanuel Bloch.
Prof. Norman Yao from the Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA, is visiting the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics from and the LMU Municht from June 9 to July 31, 2025.
Alexander Impertro has successfully defended his doctoral thesis “Quantum Gas Microscopy of Interacting Quantum Matter with Artificial Gauge Fields”. We warmly congratulate Alexander and wish him continued success in his scientific endeavours.
Valentin Klüsener has successfully defended his doctoral thesis on “Microscopy and Precision Spectroscopy for Quantum Science with Ultracold Strontium.” We warmly congratulate you Valentin and wish you all the best for the future.
Immanuel Bloch, director at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and head of the Quantum Many-Body Systems division, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) as an international member.
The new technology award was presented to him by Bavarian Minister of Science Markus Blume during a ceremonial event at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.
One of the most promising paths in the field of quantum simulation consists in studying interacting ultracold atoms in optical lattices, thus realizing the famous Hubbard model mimicking the behavior of interacting electrons in solids. Such an approach is particularly powerful when combined with the technique of quantum gas microscopy, which allows to “see” individual particles and explore microscopic correlations between them.
The relation between d-wave superconductivity and stripes is fundamental to the understanding of ordered phases in high-temperature cuprate superconductors.
Using quantum gas microscopes, the wavefunction of a quantum system can be probed with microscopic resolution through projective measurements. By nature of the optical imaging techniques that are used to implement these measurements, the observable that is probed is the local density operator -- each atom in the underlying lattice geometry appears as a bright dot in the recorded image.
Topological materials, in contrast to "ordinary" materials host edge modes which enable dissipation-free transport along the system's boundary. The transport enabled by the edge mode is robust to imperfections of the crystal and small variations of the system parameters - it is topologically protected. This protection of the edge mode is intriguing, as small variations in the system do not alter the conductance of the edge mode, a phenomenon famously observed in the quantum Hall effect and used in the redefinition of the International System of Units (SI) units in 2019. Directly observing this edge transport is intriguing,
There are three promising candidates for high-quality qubits in two-electron atoms. First, a valence electron can be excited on an ultranarrow optical transition (clock qubit). Second, the spin of the nucleus can be excited using Raman or microwave transitions (nuclear qubit). Third, the spin of the valence electron can be flipped (fine-structure qubit).
Xing-Yan Chen was selected as one of four finalists in the Deborah Jin Doctoral Thesis Award Session at the 2024 DAMOP annual meeting. Congratulations Xing-Yan! We are really happy for you!
One of the important elements at the core of physics is the symmetry of a physical system. This can be a classical "left-right"-symmetry that we all know from everyday life, but also a symmetry that is expressed in other, more unusual properties. On fundamentally "quantum" property is the quantum "spin", which describes a kind of internal rotation of an object which only exists in quantum mechanics.
Christoph Braun has successfully defended his dissertation on the topic "Real-space detection and manipulation of topological edge modes with ultracold atoms". Congratulations to Christoph and all the best for his future!
Ultracold polyatomic molecules offer intriguing new opportunities in cold chemistry, precision measurements, and quantum information processing, thanks to their rich internal structure. However, their increased complexity compared to diatomic molecules presents a formidable challenge to employ conventional cooling techniques.
The award, conferred annually by the German Physical Society, honours Immanuel's pioneering research on quantum simulations.
Xing-yan Chen has successfully defended his doctoral thesis on “Microwave-shielded ultracold polar molecules”. We warmly congratulate you Xing-yan and wishyou all the best for the future.
The faculty of Physics at the Rheinland-Pfälzsiche Technische Universität Kaiserslautern-Landau has awarded the Young Scientist Award 2023 (Nachwuchspreis) to Kevin P. Mours.
David Wei has successfully defended his doctoral thesis on “Microscopy of spin hydrodynamics and cooperative light scattering in atomic Hubbard systems”. We warmly congratulate you David and wish you all the best for the future.
Maximilian Ammenwerth won a best poster award at the Applications of Ultracold Rydberg Gases conference with his poster presentation about "Individual Strontium Atoms in a Hybrid Lattice-tweezer Quantum Simulator"
Giulio Pasqualetti successfully defended his doctoral thesis on “Probing the thermodynamics of SU(N)-symmetric Fermi gases with ultracold atoms” on July 21st, 2023. We warmly congratulate you Giulio and wish you all the best for the future.
The Mott-insulating phase of the two-dimensional (2D) Bose-Hubbard model is expected to be characterized by a nonlocal brane parity order. Parity order captures the presence of microscopic particle-hole fluctuations and entanglement, whose properties depend on the underlying lattice geometry.
For his outstanding dissertation, Joannis Koepsell received the Otto Hahn Medal, the Max Planck Society's doctoral award for excellent junior scientists.
Johannes and his work was featured in the “The people at MPQ” on the MPQ Website. Go ahead and read the complete article to learn more about his scientific past, his research interests and plans for the future.
Joannis Koepsell receives the prize for his outstanding dissertation entitled “Quantum simulation of doped two-dimensional Mott insulators”.
Controlling molecular binding at the level of single atoms is one of the holy grails of quantum chemistry. Rydberg macrodimers─bound states between highly excited Rydberg atoms─provide a novel perspective in this direction.
Immanuel Bloch was honored with the “ZEISS Research Award” for his groundbreaking experimental research on quantum simulations with ultracold atoms.
In this episode of the SZ (southgerman Newspaper) Podcast "München persönlich" (Munich up close) Immanuel explains what may soon be possible with quantum technology, how he discovered his fascination for physics
On March 17th, we organized an open house at MPQ to show interested master students our labs. The event started off with a presentation introducing the work done in the Many Body Systems Division by Immanuel Bloch, followed by lab tours in the Single Atoms lab, the Molecules lab and the Strontium lab.
The AMOP (Atoms, Molecules, Quantum Optics and Plasma) section of the German Physical Society has awarded this year’s Dissertation Prize to Pascal Weckesser.
Enhancing light–matter coupling at the level of single quanta is essential for numerous applications in quantum science. The cooperative optical response of subwavelength atomic arrays has been found to open new pathways for such strong light–matter couplings, while simultaneously offering access to multiple spatial modes of the light field.
The interplay of quantum statistics and interactions in atomic Bose–Fermi mixtures leads to a phase diagram markedly different from pure fermionic or bosonic systems. However, investigating this phase diagram remains challenging when bosons condense due to the resulting fast interspecies loss.
Sarah Hirthe successfully defended her doctoral thesis on “Quantum Gas Microscopy of Fermi-Hubbard Ladders” on February 10th, 2023.
Scattering resonances are an essential tool for controlling interactions of ultracold atoms and molecules. However, conventional Feshbach scattering resonances, which have been extensively studied in various platforms, are not expected to exist in most ultracold polar molecules due to the fast loss that occurs when two molecules approach at a close distance. Here, we demonstrate a new type of scattering resonances that is universal for a wide range of polar molecules.
Conventional superconductivity emerges from pairing of charge carriers – electrons or holes – mediated by phonons. In many unconventional superconductors, the pairing mechanism is conjectured to be mediated by magnetic correlations, as captured by models of mobile charges in doped antiferromagnets.
Collisional complexes, which are formed as intermediate states in molecular collisions, are typically short-lived and decay within picoseconds. However, in ultracold collisions involving bialkali molecules, complexes can live for milliseconds, completely changing the collision dynamics. This can lead to unexpected two-body loss in samples of nonreactive molecules.
With a wonderful buffet of homemade savory and sweet dishes from all over the world, our division celebrated its annual Christmas party on December 15, 2022.
Hendrik von Raven successfully defended his doctoral thesis on "A new Caesium quantum gas microscope with precise magnetic field control” on September 27th, 2022.
Immanuel is one of 20 scientists to be named this year's Clarivate Citation Laureate, being one of four recipients in the physics category to receive the award for his "ground-breaking research on quantum many-body systems using ultracold atomic and molecular gases, opening the way to quantum simulations of 'artificial solids'".
Ultracold polar molecules offer strong electric dipole moments and rich internal structure, which makes them ideal building blocks to explore exotic quantum matter, implement novel quantum information schemes, or test fundamental symmetries of nature. Realizing their full potential requires cooling interacting molecular gases deeply into the quantum degenerate regime.
We demonstrate a cavity-based solution to scale up experiments with ultracold atoms in optical lattices by an order of magnitude over state-of-the-art free-space lattices. Our two-dimensional (2D) optical lattices are created by power-enhancement cavities with large mode waists of 489(8)μm and allow us to trap ultracold strontium atoms at a lattice depth of 60μK by using only 80mW of input light per cavity axis.
Marcel Duda successfully defended his doctoral thesis on "Production of ground-state 23Na40K molecules in the quantum-degenerate regime" on July 26th, 2022.
planqc will develop a highly scalable quantum computer operating at room temperature and based on atoms trapped in optical lattices. planqc is building quantum computers that store information in individual atoms – nature's best qubits. Quantum information is processed by arranging these qubits in highly scalable arrays and manipulating them with precisely controlled laser pulses. planqc’s unique combination of quantum technologies is the fastest way to scale to thousands of qubits, a prerequisite for industry-relevant quantum advantage.
Topology in quantum many-body systems has profoundly changed our understanding of quantum phases of matter. The model that has played an instrumental role in elucidating these effects is the antiferromagnetic spin-1 Haldane chain.
The Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) universality class describes the coarse-grained behavior of a wealth of classical stochastic models. Surprisingly, KPZ universality was recently conjectured to also describe spin transport in the one-dimensional quantum Heisenberg model.
Ultracold mixtures of bosonic and fermionic atoms provide a powerful platform for studying quantum many-body phenomena. However, the experimental investigation of such mixtures in the strongly interacting regime has been hindered by the three-body recombination loss.
Exciting ultracold atoms into highly-excited Rydberg states extends the cold atom toolbox by long-range interactions. Rydberg macrodimers - electrostatically bound Rydberg atom pairs - provide bond lengths as large as the distances between different lattice sites in an optical lattice. Optical excitation rates of macrodimers are enhanced if the distance and orientation of the prepared ground state atom pairs match the motional state of the macrodimer state and are suppressed otherwise.
Roman Bause successfully defended his doctoral thesis on "Understanding and controlling the collisions of ultracold polar molecules" on March 30th, 2022.
Till Klostermann successfully defended his doctoral thesis on "Construction of a Caesium Quantum Gas Microscope".
Annie Park successfully defended her doctoral thesis on "Towards Quantum Simulations with Strontium in Cavity-enhanced Optical Lattices” on December 21st, 2021.
Due to a combination of computational complexity and physical pertinence, quantum many-body physics constitutes one of the most exciting applications of NISQ era quantum computers and neutral atom quantum simulators.
Immanuel Bloch has been awarded with the Maximilian Order for Science and Art on November 10th, 2021.
The competition between antiferromagnetism and hole motion in two-dimensional Mott insulators lies at the heart of a doping-dependent transition from an anomalous metal to a conventional Fermi liquid.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder visited the MPQ and got a lab tour at our Rubidium Quantum Gas Microscope experiment.
It has been predicted that even in the absence of disorder many-body systems may fail to thermalize. In this work we observe non-ergodic dynamics in the 1D tilted Fermi-Hubbard model that is distinct from previously studied regimes, and propose a microscopic mechanism that is due to emergent kinetic constraints.
What happens when two molecules collide with each other? This seemingly simple question remains unanswered in many cases. Specifically, when two molecules collide in such a way that chemical reactions are impossible due to energy and momentum conservation, one would expect that the molecules remain unchanged.
Thomas Kohlert successfully defended his doctoral thesis on "Probing weak ergodicity breaking in the one-dimensional Fermi-Hubbard model".
Nelson Darkwah Oppong successfully defended his doctoral thesis on "Probing many-body physics with multiorbital quantum gases".
Precise control and study of molecules is challenging due to the variety of internal degrees of freedom and local coordinates that are typically not controlled in an experiment. Employing quantum gas microscopy to position and resolve the atoms in bound states of Rydberg atom pairs --- so-called Rydberg macrodimers --- solves most of these challenges and enables unique access to the molecular frame.
Nikolaus Lorenz successfully defended his doctoral thesis on "A Rydberg Tweezer Platform with Potassium Atoms".
Joannis Koepsell successfully defended his doctoral thesis on "Quantum simulation of doped two-dimensional Mott insulators" on February 11th, 2021.
We warmly welcome Flavien Gyger, Dimitry Yankelev and Maximilian Ammenwerth into our Group at the MPQ!
Raphaël will investigate the properties of topological Floquet systems in the presence of interactions and disorder.
In recognition of his previous scientific work, the Selection Committee of the Humboldt foundation has awarded Thomas Chalopin with the Humboldt Research Fellowship for Postdoctoral Researchers.
Sebastian Scherg successfully defended his doctoral thesis on "Probing nonequilibrium dynamics in Fermi-Hubbard chains - from extensively-many to few conserved quantities " on January 28th, 2021. We warmly congratulate you Sebastian and wish you all the best for your future!
The International Max Planck Research School for Quantum Science and Technology is opening new PhD positions in fall 2021! Deadline for application is March 1st, 2021
Nature Physics is celebrating its 15th birthday in its October issue and our lithium experiment contributed to the cover.
Karen Wintersperger successfully defended her doctoral thesis on "Realization of Floquet topological systems with ultracold atoms in optical honeycomb lattices" on September 23th, 2020. We warmly congratulate you Karen Wintersperger and wish you all the best for your future!
We welcome Dr. Timon Hilker as our new Group Leader at the Lithium-microscope lab at the MPQ! Timon received his PhD at the MPQ in 2017. Until August 2020 he worked as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow in the Hadzibabic group at the University of Cambridge.
We welcome Dr. Johannes Zeiher as our new Group Leader at the The Rubidium Quantum Gas Microscope lab at the MPQ! Johannes received his PhD at MPQ in 2017. Until June 2020, he worked on cavity QED systems as a Feodor Lynen post-doctoral Fellow in Dan Stamper-Kurn’s group at the University of Berkeley.
Versatile interfaces with strong and tunable light–matter interactions are cornerstones for quantum science as they enable the mapping of quantum properties between light and matter. Single atoms are ideal quantum emitter of the light fields, as their only possible dissipation channel is the coupling to the electromagnetic vacuum.
Methods to control and readout multilayer systems are scarce and unreliable, but highly desirable to access quantum simulation of layered materials or to improve detection and manipulation of two-dimensional systems.
André Heinz successfully defended his doctoral thesis on "Ultracold Strontium in State-Dependent Optical Lattices" on June 26th, 2020. We warmly congratulate you André Heinz and wish you all the best for your future!
On June 23rd 2020 Antonio Rubio Abadal – Toni – successfully defended his doctoral thesis on "Probing Quantum Thermalization and Localization in Bose-Hubbard Systems". Congratulations, Toni!
Topological phases of matter have attracted a lot of interest due to their unique electronic properties that often result in exotic surface or boundary modes, whose existence is rooted in the non-trivial topological properties of the underlying system. In particular, the robustness of these properties makes them interesting for applications.
The periodic driving of both classical and quantum systems can reveal new phenomena without an analog in non-driven systems. Nonetheless, periodically driven systems do not fulfill energy conservation, which means that many-body systems will absorb energy from the drive and, eventually, heat up to an arbitrarily high temperature, what is known as "heat death".
Dr. Christian Schweizer has been awarded an Outgoing LMU Research Fellowship. He was also selected to participate at the 70th Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting. Congratulations!
New states of matter can arise when a system is exposed to a periodic drive, such as by irradiating a solid with light or by mechanically shaking a gas of ultracold atoms. While experiments have validated this method, the target often exhibits a drastically reduced lifetime because it continuously absorbs energy from the drive.
Renhao Tao, Master student in the Ultracold Molecules lab at the MPQ wins 3rd place, presenting his current research results at this years annual student research conference of the physics faculty (PsRC) at the LMU Munich.
Dr. Bharath Hebbe Madhusudhana and Dr. Cesar Cabrera have been awarded a Marie Skłodowska Curie Individual Fellowship under the Horizon 2020 program. Congratulations to both!
In recognition of his exceptional thesis: “Quantum Liquid Droplets in a Mixture of Bose-Einstein Condensates” Cesar Cabrera received the ICFO PhD Thesis award in December 2019 at the ICFO Institute in Spain.
Elementary particles carry several quantum numbers, such as charge and spin. However, in an ensemble of strongly interacting particles, the emerging degrees of freedom can fundamentally differ from those of the individual constituents. For example, one-dimensional systems are described by independent quasiparticles carrying either spin (spinon) or charge (holon).
The Rubidium lab and its research was featured in PHYSIKonkret, an information leaflet of the German physical society (DPG), that contains current scientific and science policy topics.
Some isolated quantum systems with disordered potentials fail to ever reach thermal equilibrium, a phenomenon known as many-body localization (MBL). An outstanding question concerns the stability of this phenomenon. While it is well known that exposing the quantum system to the outside world destroys localization, it is not clear what happens when the MBL system is connected to another small quantum system known as a quantum bath.
Strongly-interacting gauge theories are extremely challenging to access with conventional numerical techniques. Here, we take a first step towards quantum simulation of gauge theories by implementing a Floquet-based method with two-component ultracold bosons in a double-well potential.
Here we report the microscopic real-space characterization of magnetic polarons in a doped Fermi–Hubbard system, enabled by the single-site spin and density resolution of our ultracold-atom quantum simulator. We reveal the dressing of doublons by a local reduction—and even sign reversal—of magnetic correlations, which originates from the competition between kinetic and magnetic energy in the system.
Typically, direct optical access to molecular constituents is out of reach due to their tiny size in the sub-nanometer regime. Because highly-excited Rydberg atoms feature strong interactions even at distances of micrometers, two Rydberg atoms can form huge molecules, comparable to the size of small bacteria and larger than optical wavelengths.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 253401
Breaking down our research so that 99,999% of the worlds population would understand it, was the goal of Jayadev Vijayan with his article "Zooming into superconducters".
The Plenary Assembly of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences has appointed Professor Immanuel Bloch an ordinary member.
The Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics has honoured Prof. Stamper-Kurn an MPQ Distinguished Scholar.
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