“Understanding and controlling interactions among atoms, ions, and molecules, lies at the heart of quantum simulation.  Quantum mixtures are our scale models in the laboratory which enables us to simulate quantum many-body systems and study them.”

Rianne Lous joined the Coherence and Quantum Technology (CQT) group in the Department of Applied Physics/Eindhoven Hendrik Casimir Institute at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) in June 2022. Her research interests lie in quantumtechnologies,  understanding interactions and experimental research in the atomic, molecular and optical (AMO) field. Her research focuses on ion-atom mixtures and rydberg atom quantum computing. She is especially interested in impurity physics, quantum chemistry and sensing, as well as quantum simulation & computation with ultracold atoms & ions.

 From scratch, Rianne will be setting up an experiment that combines trapped ions with ultracold atoms, creating well-controlled laboratory quantum simulators that provide benchmarks for theory and are testbeds for sensing interactions and studying interacting quantum systems. The group will be called SIntAQS: Sensing Interactions in Atomic Quantum Systems. Research will focus on quantum sensing, chemistry, and matter. Understanding matter - specifically quantum many-body systems - is one of the major themes of today’s field of atom, molecular, and optical physics. The aim is to better calculate, design and engineer the properties of materials. Experimental efforts have a two-fold approach: build quantum computers that can calculate these properties or build quantum simulators to improve our fundamental understanding of quantum many-body phenomena. The ions can teach us about the many-body environment of atoms. On the chemistry side these systems can be used to create molecular ions and study chemical reactions. The main objective is to explore and learn, as this gives us insights into how we could use ions and atoms, especially considering their practical use for qubits in quantum computers.

Moreover she is involved in the Rydberg Atom Quantum Computing efforts, which focuses on developping a scalable quantum computing platform based on Rydberg atoms in optical tweezers.

Rianne received a Bachelor’s degree in Natural Sciences and Physics and Astronomy at Radboud University, Nijmegen the Netherlands. Next, she moved to the University of Groningen, Netherlands, where she received her Master’s (with honors) in Nanoscience which included an internship abroad at ITAMP (USA). After this, Rianne pursued a Ph.D. and a first PostDoc in the group of Prof. Grimm in Innsbruck (Austria) at the University of Innsbruck and the IQOQI (institute of quantumoptics and quantum information) of the Austrian academy of sciences. There, Rianne worked with ultracold quantum gases of lithium and potassium and carried out research on impurity physics, atom-dimer mixtures, and degenerate Bose-Fermi mixtures.

In 2019, as a PostDoc, she joined the group of Dr. Rene Gerritsma at the University of Amsterdam, where she worked with Yb+ ions in a bath of lithium atoms. This research was supported by a Marie-Sklodowska Curie European fellowship from the EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. There, she looked into molecular ion formation, ion sensing and buffer gas cooling.

Co-organizer of the EFEQT Meet-ups of the European Master Certificate in Quantum Science and Technology