Project Details
SFB 1225: Isolated quantum systems and universality in extreme conditions (ISOQUANT)
Subject Area
Physics
Term
since 2016
Website
Homepage
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 273811115
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
- A01 - Thermalisation dynamics and infrared phenomena in heavy-ion collisions (Project Heads Berges, Jürgen ; Mazeliauskas, Aleksas ; Reygers, Klaus ; Stachel, Johanna )
- A02 - From QCD transport to particle yields (Project Heads Capellino, Frederica ; Masciocchi, Silvia ; Pawlowski, Jan Martin ; Stachel, Johanna )
- A04 - Probing and characterising effective models of far-from-equilibrium universality (Project Heads Gasenzer, Thomas ; Oberthaler, Markus Kurt )
- A05 - Rydberg spin glasses (Project Heads Gärttner, Martin ; Jochim, Selim ; Weidemüller, Matthias ; Whitlock, Shannon )
- A07 - Probing and simulating universal dynamics in dipolar quantum gases (Project Heads Chomaz, Ph.D., Lauriane ; Gasenzer, Thomas )
- B01 - Precision physics on bound single, few, and many strongly correlated electron systems in strong fields (Project Heads Blaum, Klaus ; Crespo López-Urrutia, José Ramón ; Haverkort, Maurits ; Sturm, Sven ; Wetterich, Christof )
- B02 - Precision theory of highly charged ions within the Standard Model and beyond (Project Heads Di Piazza, Antonino ; Evers, Jörg ; Harman, Zoltan ; Jaeckel, Joerg ; Keitel, Christoph H. ; Palffy-Buß, Adriana )
- B03 - Nonthermal fixed points and topological data analysis for quantum fields (Project Heads Berges, Jürgen ; Pawlowski, Jan Martin ; Wienhard, Anna )
- B04 - Quantum field simulators (Project Heads Berges, Jürgen ; Jendrzejewski, Fred ; Oberthaler, Markus Kurt )
- C01 - Strongly correlated fermions (Project Heads Haverkort, Maurits ; Jochim, Selim ; Pawlowski, Jan Martin ; Schmidt, Richard ; Wetterich, Christof )
- C03 - Bose Fermi mixtures at large (but finite) mass ratios (Project Heads Chomaz, Ph.D., Lauriane ; Enss, Tilman ; Salmhofer, Manfred ; Weidemüller, Matthias )
- C06 - Flow, extreme magnetic fields, and data-driven analysis of hadronic collisions (Project Heads Dubla, Andrea ; Flörchinger, Stefan ; Masciocchi, Silvia ; Selyuzhenkov, Ilya )
- C07 - Effective many-body physics of fermions in low-dimensional materials (Project Heads Schmidt, Richard ; Zaumseil, Jana )
- ZABC - Origins of collectivity in few-body systems (Project Heads Enss, Tilman ; Jochim, Selim ; Masciocchi, Silvia ; Mazeliauskas, Aleksas )
- ZV - Coordination of the Collaborative Research Centre 1225 ISOQUANT (Project Head Berges, Jürgen )
- ZÖ - Science and society – challenges of science communication (Project Heads Berges, Jürgen ; Blaum, Klaus ; Oberthaler, Markus Kurt ; Ringena, Lisa ; Stachel, Johanna ; Weidemüller, Matthias )
Completed projects
- A03 - Nonequilibrium dynamics and relaxation in many-body quantum systems (Project Heads Erne, Sebastian ; Schmiedmayer, Jörg )
- A06 - Entanglement of quantum fields detected through entropic uncertainty relations (Project Heads Flörchinger, Stefan ; Gärttner, Martin ; Oberthaler, Markus Kurt )
- C02 - From few to many: ultracold atoms in reduced dimensions (Project Heads Enss, Tilman ; Jochim, Selim )
- C05 - Probing the QCD phase structure with heavy quarks (Project Heads Braun-Munzinger, Peter ; Klasen, Michael ; Rothkopf, Alexander Karl ; Stachel, Johanna )
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