Professor Ulrich Schneider

Ulrich Schneider is a Professor of Many-Body Physics.

Academic interests

Ulrich Schneider's main research interest is many-body dynamics. Following a statement by P. W. Anderson, 'More is Different'; genuine many-body phenomena are emergent phenomena that only appear when many particles come together, typical examples being superfluidity or magnetism.

We study these effects using ultracold atoms, that is Bose-Einstein condensates and degenerate Fermi gases, which we load into optical lattices. These periodic optical potentials play the role of the electrostatic potential felt by electrons in a conventional solid.

Thereby, we effectively build a quantum simulator for condensed matter physics, where we can study many-body physics in a very clean and precisely controlled system and have all the tools from quantum optics at our disposal.

Degrees obtained

• Diploma in Physics, TU Kaiserslautern 2004.
• PhD, Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, 2011.

Awards and prizes

• IOP Joseph Thomson Medal, 2023.
• ERC Consolidator Grant, 2021.
• ERC Starting Grant, 2016.
• Rudolf-Kaiser Preis, 2016.
• Aspen Winter Prize, 2015.
• Dissertation prize of the Faculty of Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science at the Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz, 2012.

Biography

Before coming to Cambridge, I worked as a Senior Scientist and Group Leader in the Quantum Optics group at the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität in Munich. Before that, I did a PhD at the Johannes-Gutenberg Universität in Mainz, supervised by Professor Immanuel Bloch and read physics at the Universität Kaiserslautern.

Other interests

Mountain biking, hiking, music (bass guitar).