Jérôme Beugnon has been Awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant

Jérôme Beugnon, a researcher in our Bose-Einstein Condensate team, has been awarded a 2019 ERC Consolidator Grant for his project Topological many-body states with ultracold Rydberg atoms (PE2), more succinctly known as Toryd.

ERC Consolidator Grants are awarded to exceptional researchers of any nationality and age who have between seven and twelve years of experience after their doctorate and have demonstrated highly promising scientific achievements. The research must be conducted at a public or private research institution located in one of the EU Member States or associated countries. The funding, averaging €2 million per grant and lasting up to five years, primarily supports hiring researchers and staff to strengthen the teams of grant recipients.

The Toryd project studies the dynamics of atoms within a one-dimensional channel connected to two reservoirs, each with fixed temperature TT and chemical potential μ\mu. The regime of strong interactions is achieved by dressing the channel atoms with a laser that weakly excites them into a Rydberg state ∣r⟩|r\rangle.
The image in the upper left shows a cloud of atoms in a similar configuration, previously realized by the team.