Laurent Vernac

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR

Office: E019, Campus Villetaneuse

Research group website
Laboratory website


My research background:

I did my thesis at the Laboratoire Kastler Brossel in quantum optics, studying the coupling between Cesium atoms and a laser in an optical cavity, to modify the quantum properties of the laser and the atoms. I did a post-doc at Harvard, where I built an experiment producing an intense jet of ultracold Rubidium atoms. I was recruited to the Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers to build an experiment producing chromium quantum gases: the Bose-Einstein condensate and the Fermi sea. Chromium atoms have a large magnetic moment, which enables them to interact at a distance, with magnetic dipolar interactions. My current research focuses on the study of chromium atoms trapped in optical lattices: we aim to measure the spin-related quantum properties of these atoms.

Courses taught:

  • Physique Quantique 1 : Équation de Schrödinger
  • Physique Quantique 2 : Oscillateur Harmonique – Moments cinétiques
  • Physique pour les Technologies Quantiques 3 : Technologies quantiques et Applications
  • Physique pour les Technologies Quantiques 4 : Physique Atomique et Moléculaire

Research themes:

  • Dipolar quantum gases
  • Entanglement and quantum thermalization of coupled-spin systems
Bose-Einstein condensation of chromium at LPL

A few selected articles

  • Youssef Aziz Alaoui, Sean R. Muleady, Edwin Chaparro, Youssef Trifa, Ana Maria Rey, Tommaso Roscilde, Bruno Laburthe-Tolra, and Laurent Vernac, «Measuring Bipartite Spin Correlations of Lattice-Trapped Dipolar Atoms», Phys. Rev. Lett. 133, 203401 (2024).
    DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.203401
  • S. Lepoutre, J. Schachenmayer, L. Gabardos, B. Zhu, B. Naylor, E. Maréchal, O. Gorceix, A. M. Rey, L. Vernac, and B. Laburthe-Tolra, «Out-of-equilibrium quantum magnetism and thermalization in a spin-3 many-body dipolar lattice system», Nat Commun 10, 1714 (2019).
    DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-09699-5