SFB 1225:  Isolated quantum systems and universality in extreme conditions (ISOQUANT)

Subject Area Physics
Term since 2016
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 273811115
 

Project Description

Over the past years, quantum systems in extreme conditions have become a unifying research theme crossing traditional lines of specialisation from high-energy and nuclear physics to atomic and condensed matter physics. Quantum systems in extreme conditions can exhibit characteristic common properties despite dramatic differences in key parameters such as temperature, density or field strength. The existence of universal regimes, where even quantitative agreements between seemingly disparate physical systems can be observed, drives a remarkable convergence of research activities. This allows us to ask closely related questions – and often even the same ones – for very distinct physical platforms. Together, the synergies help us to give more complete answers to outstanding questions than individual systems could provide. Much progress is achieved in this way, opening-up new perspectives on long-standing problems. A major focus of the Collaborative Research Centre 1225 concerns research on extreme conditions experimentally realised in heavy-ion collisions probing quantum chromodynamics (QCD), highly charged ions investigating strong-field quantum electrodynamics (QED), and ultracold quantum gases as versatile model systems for complex few- to many-body problems. Together, these systems probe more than twenty orders of magnitude in temperature or energy scale! Focusing on isolated quantum systems gives access to relevant fundamental physics problems and offers clean experimental and theoretical settings. Here the outstanding experimental precision of highly charged ion platforms offers sensitivity to fundamental physics even beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. An important strength of our approach is the investigation of transient phenomena as well as equilibrium properties from a common perspective. This allows us to address some of the most pressing questions about the thermalisation process, the interplay of strong fields with the vacuum and matter, and the phase structure of systems in extreme conditions. We investigate regimes where the dimensionless combination of the interaction strength, fields expectation values and characteristic energy scale or density of states becomes of order unity. Therefore, this takes into account also relevant weak-coupling regimes in the presence of strong fields or large fluctuations which occur far from equilibrium.
DFG Programme Collaborative Research Centres
International Connection Austria, Norway

Current projects

Completed projects

Applicant Institution Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
Participating Institution GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH; Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik; Max-Planck-Institut für Mathematik in den Naturwissenschaften (MIS)
Participating University Technische Universität Wien
Spokesperson Professor Dr. Jürgen Berges