Francesca FERLAINO

Brought to quantum degeneracy, ultracold gases enable the study of many-body quantum phenomena, in which the interaction between atoms can be so carefully mastered as to determine the very state of matter. Typically, this interaction has a short-range and isotropic nature, the latter meaning that the atoms globally attract or repel each other. However, there is another possibility that naturally emerges for some specific atomic species, such as erbium and dysprosium, featuring an extraordinarily large magnetic dipole moment. Magnetic properties give rise to dipolar many-body interactions, qualitatively very different from others in that it is long-range and anisotropic, thus adding connectivity and directionality at the quantum level.