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nix nix Wolfgang Lutz Jürgen Knoblich Portrait Gerhard Widmer Portrait Markus Arndt Portrait Christian Krattenthaler Portrait Rudolf Zechner Portrait Joerg Schmiedmayer Portrait Barry Dickson Portrait Rudolf Grimm Portrait Walter Pohl Portrait Renee Schroeder Portrait Ferenc Krausz Portrait Heribert Hirt Portrait Meinrad Busslinger Portrait Peter Markowich Portrait Andre Gingrich Portrait Kim Ashley Nasmyth Portrait Peter Zoller Portrait Walter Schachermayer Portrait Georg Gottlob Portrait Marjori + Antonius Matzke Portrait Erich Gornik Portrait Erwin Wagner Portrait Ruth Wodak Portrait

Wittgenstein Award Laureate 2005 Univ. Prof. Dr. Rudolf Grimm

Atomic and molecular quantum gases

Rudolf Grimm cv Scientific Career ext

Institute for Experimental Physics at the University of Innsbruck ext

Institut für Experimentalphysik Universität Innsbruck ext

Institut für Quantenoptik und Quanteninformation (IQOQI) ext

mail Rudolf.Grimm@ultracold.at

”PresseLaser light is an essential tool in my laboratory to cool atoms down to temperatures a few nanokelvin above absolute zero. Laser light has fascinated me since my school days.”

ICE-COLD OBSERVATIONS OF QUANTUM STATES

Why Innsbruck? How did it come about that such a small university has such a high international reputation in the area of quantum and experimental physics? Rudolf Grimm came here from Germany in 2000. Looking back, he says,” it pretty much started with Anton Zeilinger, who from 1990 was the first professor of quantum physics to work here. From then on there has been a clever policy of hiring professors in this seminal area. There was soon a critical mass, a Special Research Programme (SFB) was established and now Innsbruck is an attractive place for scientists and visiting researchers.”

Grimm is an experimental physicist at the University of Innsbruck and scientific director of the Austrian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information in Innsbruck. He is too modest to mention that he himself represents good evidence for the scientific quality of the location. His contributions to our knowledge on the quantum behaviour of matter at extremely low temperatures – we are talking about a few billionths of a degree above absolute zero – are considered groundbreaking. They hold the promise of new insights into the possibilities of supraconductivity, the frictionless transport of particle streams. And to accelerate these and other insights, Grimm was awarded the 2005 Wittgenstein Prize.

So-called Bose-Einstein condensates have been available for ten years. All particles in such condensates are in the same quantum state. ”The past couple of years have seen dramatic developments in the area: atoms in ultra-cold gases can now be joined together to form molecules, weakly bonded pairs or even larger quantum objects … Chemistry at absolute zero holds the promise of synthesizing more complex objects in well defined quantum states, whose internal and external degrees of freedom can be perfectly controlled.”

But Grimm, who is the owner of the Web site ultracold atoms ext, is highly aware that the area of research into ultra-cold atoms ”is extremely competitive. About 200 groups are involved, ten of them at the forefront. We are among them.” With his team he has pressed ahead with experiments on fermionic mixtures, which are held as ”clouds” in space. They have examined pair formation of a type of atom. Now the range of possibilities should be dramatically extended by taking two different components, for example a heavy and a light atom, and forming a molecule from them. ”New properties would result. They could be made into dipoles that can be manipulated in electrical fields. This leads to phenomena such as supraconductivity.” Grimm sees the next step – the details of which soon descend into extremely complicated physics – as forming Bose-Einstein condensates of these molecules, which would then represent the starting point for further important experiments.

Possible applications? Not that loss-free transport of electricity is likely in the short term. It is more likely that the work could lead to a model of what happens in a neutron star. ”The physics is the same, although the density of matter differs by a factor of a one with 28 zeros.” In the medium-term, however, Grimm thinks that supraconductivity is in principle possible also at relatively high temperatures. Thanks to the money from the Prize and with the support of the University, the SFB and the EU, Grimm now has nearly thirty people in his group. ”The Wittgenstein Prize gives us a high degree of flexibility. If interested and interesting post-docs come to me I can say, ‘I want you and I have the money to hire you immediately.’” In April 2006, for example, three new people started work in Innsbruck. ”This is a possibility you just don’t have otherwise and an enormous plus point for our competitiveness.”

Rudolf Grimm