Ultracold Erbium: Exploring Exotic Quantum Gases

The exceptional advances in the field of ultracold quantum gases are opening new frontiers in the understanding of modern quantum physics. Within the START grant, we developed novel techniques, enabling us to produce ultracold bosonic and fermionic quantum matter using for the first time the highly magnetic Erbium atoms in the gas phase. The motivation to focus on this rather unexplored and exotic atomic species is that Erbium atoms are capable to interact over long-distance via the so-called dipole-dipole interaction, originating from the large magnetic moment of Er. Using these beyond-contact-interaction quantum gases, we were able to observe a plethora of novel phenomena, including the anisotropic quantum scattering of particles, dipolar evaporative cooling of identical, and the deformation of the Fermi surface, and the appearance a dense forest of Fano-Feshbach resonances caused by the highly anisotropic nature of the interaction between atoms.