Immanuel Bloch (born 16 November 1972,

Fulda Fulda () (historically in English called Fuld) is a town in Hesse, Germany; it is located on the river Fulda and is the administrative seat of the Fulda district (''Kreis''). In 1990, the town hosted the 30th Hessentag state festival. Histor ...

) is a German

experimental physicist Experimental physics is the category of disciplines and sub-disciplines in the field of physics that are concerned with the observation of physical phenomena and experiments. Methods vary from discipline to discipline, from simple experiments an ...

. His research is focused on the investigation of quantum many-body systems using ultracold atomic and molecular quantum gases. Bloch is known for his work on atoms in artificial crystals of light, optical lattices, especially the first realization of a quantum phase transition from a weakly interacting superfluid to a strongly interacting Mott insulating state of matter.

Career

Bloch studied physics at the University of Bonn in 1995, followed by a one-year research visit to

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

. He obtained his PhD in 2000 working under Theodor W. Hänsch at the Ludwig-Maximilian's University in Munich. The thesis title was ''Atomlaser und Phasenkohärenz atomarer Bose-Einstein-Kondensate''. As a junior group leader, he continued in Munich and started his work on ultracold quantum gases in optical lattices. In 2003, he moved to a full professor position in experimental physics at the

University of Mainz The Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (german: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz) is a public research university in Mainz, Rhineland Palatinate, Germany, named after the printer Johannes Gutenberg since 1946. With approximately 32,000 stud ...

, where he stayed until 2009. In 2008 he was appointed scientific director of the newly founded division on ''Quantum Many-Body Systems'' 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, ...

in Garching. Since 2012 he has been vice-dean at the department of physics of

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's sixth-oldest university in continuous operatio ...

and managing director of the

since 2012.

Research

Bloch's work focuses on the investigation of quantum many-body system using ultracold atoms stored in optical lattice potentials. Among other things, he is known for the realization of a

quantum phase transition In physics, a quantum phase transition (QPT) is a phase transition between different quantum phases ( phases of matter at zero temperature). Contrary to classical phase transitions, quantum phase transitions can only be accessed by varying a phy ...

from a superfluid to a

Mott insulator Mott insulators are a class of materials that are expected to conduct electricity according to conventional band theories, but turn out to be insulators (particularly at low temperatures). These insulators fail to be correctly described by band ...

, in which ultracold atoms were brought into the regime of strong correlations for the first time, thereby allowing one to mimic the behaviour

strongly correlated material Strongly correlated materials are a wide class of compounds that include insulators and electronic materials, and show unusual (often technologically useful) electronic and magnetic properties, such as metal-insulator transitions, heavy fermio ...

s. The experimental ideas were based on a theoretical proposal by

Peter Zoller Peter may refer to: People * List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Peter (given name) ** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church * Peter (surname), a su ...

and

Ignacio Cirac Juan Ignacio Cirac Sasturain (born 11 October 1965), known professionally as Ignacio Cirac, is a Spanish physicist. He is one of the pioneers of the field of quantum computing and quantum information theory. He is the recipient of the 2006 Pri ...

. His other works includes the observation of a

Tonks–Girardeau gas In physics, a Tonks–Girardeau gas is a Bose gas in which the repulsive interactions between bosonic particles confined to one dimension dominate the system's physics. It is named after physicists Marvin D. Girardeau and Lewi Tonks. It is not a B ...

of strongly interacting bosons in one dimensions, the detection of collapses and revivals of the wavefunction of a

Bose–Einstein condensate In condensed matter physics, a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) is a state of matter that is typically formed when a gas of bosons at very low densities is cooled to temperatures very close to absolute zero (−273.15 °C or −459.6 ...

because of interactions, and the use of quantum noise correlations to observe Hanbury-Brown and Twiss bunching and antibunching for bosonic and fermionic atoms (simultaneously with the group of

Alain Aspect Alain Aspect (; born 15 June 1947) is a French physicist noted for his experimental work on quantum entanglement. Aspect was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger, "for experiments with entangl ...

). More recently, his research team was able to realize single-atom resolved imaging and addressing of ultracold atoms held in an optical lattice. Much of hiss related work was carried out in the group of

Markus Greiner Markus Greiner is a German physicist and Professor of Physics at Harvard University. Greiner studied under the Nobel Laureate Theodor Hänsch at the Ludwig-Maximilians University and at the Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics, where he rece ...

Awards

In 2005 he was presented with the International Commission of Optics Prize. In 2011, he received the EPS Prize for Fundamental Aspects of Quantum Electronics and Optics of the

European Physical Society The European Physical Society (EPS) is a non-profit organisation whose purpose is to promote physics and physicists in Europe through methods such as physics outreach. Formally established in 1968, its membership includes the national physical so ...

. In 2013, Bloch was awarded the

Körber European Science Prize The Körber European Science Prize is presented annually by the Körber Foundation in Hamburg honoring outstanding scientists working in Europe for their promising research projects. The prize is endowed with one million euro (until 2018: 750,000 e ...

and the International Senior BEC Award. For the year 2015 he received the

Harvey Prize Harvey Prize is an annual Israeli award for breakthroughs in science and technology, as well as contributions to peace in the Middle East granted by the Technion in Haifa. History The prize is named for industrialist and inventor Leo Harvey. T ...

from Israel's Technion Institute.Harvey Prize Laureates
/ref> He is a member of the

German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina The German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (german: Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina – Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften), short Leopoldina, is the national academy of Germany, and is located in Halle (Saale). Founde ...

and an external member of the

Canadian Institute for Advanced Research The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) is a Canadian-based global research organization that brings together teams of top researchers from around the world to address important and complex questions. It was founded in 1982 and is s ...

References

External links

CV

Immanuel Bloch at LMU and MPQ

Group Homepage

Max-Planck Institute of Quantum Optics

Fakultät für Physik, LMU Munich
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bloch, Immanuel Quantum physicists 21st-century German physicists Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize winners 1972 births Living people People from Fulda University of Bonn alumni Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni Max Planck Institute directors Fellows of the American Physical Society