Immanuel Bloch is Professor for Experimental Physics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich and Director of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching.

He is among the leading scientists worldwide in the field of research into ultracold quantum matter at temperatures near absolute zero. With the help of laser beams, he generates artificial crystals of light, in which ultracold atoms can be captured as in a matrix of microscopic, laser pincer-like traps. In this way, artificial model systems for real solids can be generated that can be controlled extremely well. For example, this makes it possible to precisely adjust the crystal structure or the interaction among atoms. It is also possible to open up entirely new parameter ranges to study the behavior of matter under most extreme conditions. “With the help of ultracold atoms in optical lattices, the vision of physics Nobel prize winner Richard Feynman, i.e. a quantum simulator for studying complex quantum matter, may become reality. What was science fiction thirty years ago, is reality today,” Bloch says.

His research was acknowledged by the Harvey Prize, the Körber European Science Prize, a Synergy Grant of the European Research Council (ERC), the Senior Bose-Einstein Condensation Award and the Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation (DFG). He is also a member of the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina), the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW) and the Max Planck Society.