Silke Ospelkaus-Schwarzer is a German experimental physicist who studies ultra-cold molecular materials at the

University of Hanover Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz University Hannover (german: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität), also known as the University of Hannover, is a public research university located in Hanover, Germany. Founded on 2 May 1831 as Higher Vocational Sc ...

Institute of Quantum Optics. She was awarded a

European Research Council The European Research Council (ERC) is a public body for funding of scientific and technological research conducted within the European Union (EU). Established by the European Commission in 2007, the ERC is composed of an independent Scientific ...

Consolidator Award in 2022.

Early life and education

Ospelkaus studied physics at the

University of Bonn The Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (german: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) is a public research university located in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the ( en, Rhine U ...

. She moved to the

University of Hamburg The University of Hamburg (german: link=no, Universität Hamburg, also referred to as UHH) is a public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('' Allgemeines Vor ...

for her doctoral research, where she studied Fermi-Bose mixtures of potassium and

rubidium Rubidium is the chemical element with the symbol Rb and atomic number 37. It is a very soft, whitish-grey solid in the alkali metal group, similar to potassium and caesium. Rubidium is the first alkali metal in the group to have a density higher ...

in optical lattices. She was awarded the doctoral prize of the

German Physical Society The German Physical Society (German: , DPG) is the oldest organisation of physicists. The DPG's worldwide membership is cited as 60,547, as of 2019, making it the largest physics society in the world. It holds an annual conference () and multiple ...

. She moved to the

JILA JILA, formerly known as the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics, is a physical science research institute in the United States. JILA is located on the University of Colorado Boulder campus. JILA was founded in 1962 as a joint institute of ...

and the

National Institute of Standards and Technology The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sci ...

at the

University of Colorado Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado syst ...

Research and career

In 2009, Ospelkaus returned to Germany, where she was made a group leader at the

Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics The Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics (abbreviation: MPQ; german: Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik) is a part of the Max Planck Society which operates 87 research facilities in Germany. The institute is located in Garching, Germany, w ...

. She investigates the behaviour of atomic and molecular gases at ultra-cold temperatures. In particular, ultra-cold molecular gases offer hope to better understand chemical processes. She has investigated two species atomic quantum gases mixtures, from which she can prepare polar molecules in a degenerate state. By cooling hot samples of sodium and potassium, Ospelkaus is able to study exotic phenomena such as hyperfine ro-vibrational electronic interactions. She first combines Zeeman slowing with two-dimensional

magneto-optical trap A magneto-optical trap (MOT) is an apparatus which uses laser cooling and a spatially-varying magnetic field to create a trap which can produce samples of cold, trapped, neutral atoms. Temperatures achieved in a MOT can be as low as several microk ...

ping, and once the atoms are cooled below the Doppler limit, loads them into a

magnetic quadrupole A quadrupole or quadrapole is one of a sequence of configurations of things like electric charge or current, or gravitational mass that can exist in ideal form, but it is usually just part of a multipole expansion of a more complex structure refl ...

trap. At this stage, microwave evaporation cools the sodium, which results in the sympathetic cooling of potassium. At ≈ 10µK, interactions between the sodium and magnesium become increasingly strong, and further cooling demands more sophisticated tools. These include magnetic

Feshbach resonance In physics, a Feshbach resonance can occur upon collision of two slow atoms, when they temporarily stick together forming an unstable compound with short lifetime (so-called resonance). It is a feature of many-body systems in which a bound state i ...

. Ospelkaus has demonstrated laser cooling to study diatomic molecules. She achieves this cooling using direct laser cooling and buffer gas cooling. Ultra-cold molecules are essentially stationary, which allows for their structure-property relationships to be studied at ultra-high precision. Dense gases of these molecules exhibit quantum behaviour, which allows for investigations into superconductivity. Ospelkaus uses molecular spectroscopy to understand the quantum states of alkali metal – alkaline earth metal atomic gases. In 2022, she was awarded a

consolidator grant.

Selected publications

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ospelkaus, Silke Living people University of Hamburg alumni University of Bonn alumni Academic staff of the University of Hanover German women physicists 20th-century German physicists 21st-century German scientists Year of birth missing (living people)