Post-doctoral position on simulating gauge theories with Rydberg atom arrays

ICFO is offering a postdoctoral position to a well-qualified, highly motivated and dynamic young scientist who wishes to enhance his/her scientific career in a friendly and stimulating environment.

The successful candidate will be joining the Ultracold Quantum Gases group led by Prof. Dr. Leticia Tarruell.

Gauge theories play a fundamental role in our understanding of nature, from the interactions between elementary particles to the effective description of strongly correlated systems. In recent years, there has been an immense effort to quantum simulate them in AMO systems. However, until now the experiments have remained limited to very specific models and to one spatial dimension. Thanks to their flexibility and controllability, combined with the long-range character of the Rydberg blockade, Rydberg atom arrays constitute an ideal experimental platform to extend these studies to higher dimensions and more complex theories. We are currently setting up a new experimental apparatus, based on arrays of strontium atoms trapped in decorated tweezer arrays, to tackle the challenge of simulating lattice gauge theories in two and three spatial dimensions.

The successful candidate will join a small team of Master, PhD students and postdocs, and is expected to play a leading role in the development of the apparatus, as well as on planning and performing the first experiments. The group has previous experimental experience on the simulation of gauge theories with ultracold atoms [Nature 608, 293 (2022)], and the project is supported through several theoretical collaborations within the European QuantERA project DYNAMITE (From Dynamical Gauge Fields to Lattice Gauge Theory).