ALP Seminar: Ultracold probes of the universe: from the microscopic to astrophysical

Ultracold atoms provide an extremely versatile toolbox to study phenomena across physics and the broader sciences, on scales ranging from the microscopic properties of interacting electron systems to the geophysical processes governing the Earth and the dynamics of astrophysical objects. Two broad categories of experiments within this toolbox are quantum simulation, where cold atoms provide an analog to the system of interest that can be manipulated and probed, and quantum sensing, based on the extreme sensitivity of these ultracold atom systems.

I will discuss an ultracold strontium platform that bridges the gap between quantum sensing and quantum simulation. This is a research and development platform for new techniques in very-long baseline atom interferometry to study fundamental phenomena, including searches for dark matter and gravitational waves, with a new capacity for quantum simulation experiments through the addition of a quasicrystalline optical lattice with single-site addressing using optical tweezers. I will discuss the broader physics goals of both experiments as well as my plans at the promising intersection of quantum sensing and many-body physics, where quantum simulation can be used to inform the next generation of quantum sensors, and quantum sensors offer validation and characterisation of quantitative quantum simulators.