Thesis defense of Pascal Scholl

Thesis defense of Pascal Scholl, PhD student in the Quantum Optics group at the Charles Fabry Laboratory, on 06 December 2021 in the Auditorium from 2 pm, on the topic: "Quantum simulation of spin models with large arrays of Rydberg atoms".

Abstract: "Single atoms trapped in arrays of optical tweezers and excited to Rydberg states are a promising experimental platform for the quantum simulation of spin models. In this thesis, we first improved the platform by increasing the number of atoms from around forty to two hundred, and by improving the system’s coherence by a factor ten. We then revisited the 2D Ising model by exciting coherently more than a hundred atoms from their ground state towards a Rydberg state. The numerical simulations of the system’s evolution are difficult to perform considering the high number of particles, which means that the numerical exploration of the Ising model is limited. We used this asset to explore with our quantum simulator the model’s features such as quantum phase transitions, or the system’s ground states. This brings the platform one step closer from its original purpose: a new way to explore strongly entangled systems for which numerical simulations are hard to perform."