Welcome to the “Quantum Optics – Atoms” group, led by Antoine Browaeys. We are part of the Laboratoire Charles Fabry (UMR 8501 of CNRS) at Institut d’Optique.

Our research focuses on experimental studies of the effects of dipole-dipole interactions in strongly correlated systems of a few atoms.

January 2026: We are hiring! We have an open post-doc position on the Rydberg setup; contact Antoine Browaeys or/and Thierry Lahaye for more details. 

We are organizing a new edition of the workshop on “Long range interaction in quantum systems” from February 15th to 20th 2026 in les Houches (France). More details here: https://www.erbium.at/longrange26/

News

December 2025: Sara successfully defended her PhD, congrats Sara!

October 2025: Martin, and Théo are now officially PhD students in the group! welcome! 

April 2025: We have three new interns starting in the group: Olivia, Martin, and Théo. Welcome!

March 4th, 2025: Gabriel Emperauger defends his PhD thesis, successfully of course! Congratulations!

27 September 2024: Guillaume Bornet defends his PhD thesis, successfully of course! Congratulations Dr. Bornet!

30 August 2024: Cheng Chen leaves the group after three (very successful!) years of post-doc on the Rydberg setup. Thanks so much for all you’ve brought us, Cheng! We wish you all the best as you start your own group at the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing!

29 August 2024: Our paper Rearrangement of individual atoms in a 2000-site optical-tweezer array at cryogenic temperatures, reporting work done in collaboration with PASQAL, is now published in PRApplied. Check it out here!

25 June 2024: Our paper Enhancing a Many-Body Dipolar Rydberg Tweezer Array with Arbitrary Local Controls is now published in PRL. Check it out here!

1 June 2024: Giulio Biagioni joins the group for his post-doc; he will work on the Dy experiment. Welcome, Giulio!

April 2024: New lab members, as M2 interns join us! Guillaume Tremblier will work on the light scattering Rb setup; Yannis Bencherif will work on the Dy setup; finally, Romain Martin joins the Rydberg team. Welcome to you all!

2 January 2024: Mu Qiao joins the group for his post-doc; he will work on the Rydberg experiment. Welcome, Mu!

1 December 2023: Lukas Klein joins the group for his PhD; he will work on the new Rydberg setup. Welcome, Lukas!

14 November 2023: Our Dy single atom trapping paper is now published in PRL, and is the subject of a synospsis on the APS website! 

28 September 2023: Our spin-squeezing paper is now published in Nature! Check it out here!

7 March 2023: We welcome two new Master students, Bastien Gély and Valère Sautel, who will work on the Rydberg project and on the Nanocloud project, respectively. Welcome, Bastien and Valère!

2 March 2023: Our latest paper on the Rydberg setup, entitled Continuous Symmetry Breaking in a Two-dimensional Rydberg Array, is now published in Nature! Check it out here!

News archive (2016-2022)