Special CMSP Seminar TUESDAY 1 March at 14:00 hrs.

[Condensed Matter Section]

Special Seminar in Condensed Matter Physics and
Statistical Physics


TUESDAY 1 March at 14:00 hrs.
please note venue:  Luigi Stasi Seminar Room, Leonardo building


Marcello DALMONTE (Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, 
University of Innsbruck, Austria)

"Strongly Correlated Low-Dimensional Gases: From Supersymmetric
Quantum Criticiality to Majorana Quasi-Particles"


Abstract:
Ultracold quantum gases have emerged in recent years as flexible 
platforms to experimentally access strongly correlated regimes. In the 
first part of this talk, I will discuss how novel techniques based on 
engineering long-range interactions using Rydberg gases pave the way for 
the investigation of frustrated magnetism in reduced dimensionality. In 
particular, using a combination of analytical and numerical methods, I 
will show how a certain class of soft-shoulder Hubbard models can 
support liquid states of matter which circumvent the restrictions 
imposed by Luttinger theorem, and that are separated from more 
conventional liquids by supersymmetric conformal critical points. In the 
second part of the talk, the focus will be on Majorana quasi-particles 
in fermionic quantum gases. These paradigmatic excitations have 
attracted a lot of interest recently due to their potential for quantum 
computing applications. However, their observation is challenging, as 
one has first to identify proper Hamiltonian setting supporting those, 
and then find a proper probing. After reviewing briefly which classes of 
cold atom Hamiltonians can support such states, I will present some 
recent results on how to employ a fractionalized Josephson effect to 
hallmark the presence of Majorana quasi-particles and distinguish them 
from more conventional excitations.