Postdoctoral and PhD positions at the Institute of Science and Technology in Austria | IST Austria

Prof. Mikhail Lemeshko is looking for highly motivated postdocs interested in theoretical research at the interface of atomic, molecular, optical, chemical, and condensed matter physics.

Selected Projects

• Studying open quantum systems and understanding how dissipation acts at the microscopic scale.

In a number of applications, such as quantum information processing and coherent spectroscopy, coupling to a fluctuating bath leads to undesired decoherence. In some other cases, however, interaction with the environment results in novel effects, such as the localization transition in the spin-boson model, or enhanced efficiency of energy transfer in photosynthetic complexes. The controllability offered by modern ultracold experiments allows not only to understand the effects of dissipation, but also to make use of it as a convenient resource for quantum state preparation.

As a recent example, we have shown that bonding between ultracold atoms or molecules can arise due to non-conservative forces induced by dissipation. Remarkably, such "dissipatively-bound molecules" can be formed even if interparticle interactions are purely repulsive. An extension of this idea to a many-particle system results in a dissipation-induced spatial long-range order in ultracold gases.

• Many-body physics of ultracold quantum gases: quantum simulation of phenomena taking place in "conventional" condensed matter physics, as well as engineering Hamiltonians featuring novel, unobserved phenomena.

Our recent research concerned the many-body behavior of quadrupolar quantum gases and preparation of strongly interacting states of polar molecules in optical lattices.

• Developing techniques to manipulate atoms, molecules, and interactions between them with electromagnetic fields, and applying this knowledge to the fundamental directions described above, as well as to practical applications, such as using cold molecules as electromagnetic field sensors.