Tarruell, Leticia
ICREA Research Professor at Institut de Ciències Fotòniques (ICFO).
Experimental Sciences & Mathematics
Short biography
Leticia Tarruell is an ICREA Research Professor at ICFO. She studied physics in Madrid and Paris, and obtained her Ph.D. thesis in Quantum Physics in 2008, with a thesis on superfluid Fermi gases carried out at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. As a postdoctoral researcher at the ETH Zurich, she investigated artificial graphene and quantum magnetism with ultracold fermionic atoms in optical lattices. After a stay as Chargé de Recherche CNRS at Institut d’Optique in Bordeaux, she joined ICFO in 2013 and ICREA in 2021. At ICFO, she leads the Ultracold Quantum Gases experimental group. She was awarded an ERC Consolidator grant in 2021 and has been involved in many international projects, including as a PI in the European FET projects QUIC and DAALI, and as a PI and foreign collaborator in a Research Unit from the German DFG.
Research interests
Leticia Tarruell leads the Ultracold Quantum Gases experimental group at ICFO, which uses ultracold (nanokelvin) atomic gases as model systems to explore fundamental phenomena in quantum many-body physics. By exploiting atom-light interactions, the group engineers highly controllable artificial quantum materials and probes their properties. The goal is to employ these systems as quantum simulators (i.e. special purpose quantum computers) for studying open problems in condensed-matter physics, and to realize novel phases without counterpart in the solid-state context. The group research therefore lies at the crossing between quantum optics and condensed-matter physics.