Double Honour for Tim Langen

Langen TimDr. Tim Langen has been honoured twice for his research studying the many-body physics of ultra-cold quantum gases. He received a QEOD Thesis Prize from the European Physical Society (EPS) and a Springer Theses Award . The EPS/QEOD thesis prizes are awarded on a biennial basis for the best-nominated Ph.D thesis in the area of quantum electronics and optics submitted in the two years prior to the CLEO®/Europe-I(E)QEC meetings.The award-winning works in the book series “Springer Theses – the best of the best” are selected worldwide based on their academic excellence and their impact onto the respective area of research.

As part of his doctoral studies in the Atomic Physics and Quantum Optics research group at the Atominstitut, Langen succeeded in pioneering experiments to answer the question of how temperature emerges in quantum physics. This question is of importance in many research fields and has for been one of the central open questions in physics for almost a century.

In the experiments the quantum mechanical emergence of a temperature could be directly observed and analysed for the first time. The results showed remarkable similarities between the emergence of the temperature and the emergence of classical properties in a quantum system. That is why the experiment could also help to explain, why the world that we experience every day looks so classical, even though it is governed by quantum laws. As a consequence, these findings are also an important step towards the development of robust quantum technologies.

The dissertation has been carried out at the Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology (VCQ) at TU Vienna. It was supported by the FWF through the graduate school Complex Quantum Systems (CoQuS).

Currently, Langen is working as a Feodor Lynen postdoctoral fellow at JILA in Boulder, Colorado.

Posted: June 18th, 2015, | Comments: none