Dr. Giovanni Cerchiari

Institut für Experimentalphysik Universtität Innsbruck Technikerstrasse 25/4 A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria Office: +43 512 507 52462 Lab: +43 512 507 52475 Email: Giovanni.Cerchiari[at]uibk.ac.at

Academic history

Main area of research and most important achievements

I am interested in fundamental and applied research in atomic physics. I have been working in this field since 2012 in a collaboration involving several institutions (from Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria and France) and in small research groups.

From 2012 until 2019, I have been a member of the AEgIS experiment at CERN, whose aim is the direct measurement of gravity on antihydrogen. During my master thesis, I participated in the group of Dr. M. Giammarchi (INFN Milano) in the development of a laser system for the excitation of positronium atoms (Ps). Excited Ps is used for producing antihydrogen by charge exchange with antiprotons for the gravity measurement.

I dedicated my Ph.D. on experimental studies towards the first realization of negative ion laser cooling at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg in the research group of Dr. A. Kellerbauer. A laser-cooled species of anions can be used to cool any other negative ion sympathetically, with appealing applications for antihydrogen gravity measurements. During my Ph.D., La- was identified as a good candidate for Doppler laser cooling, we developed a new method to capture and cool negative ions from a beam in Penning and Paul traps and, finally, we demonstrated an evaporative cooling technique for anions based on photodetachment.

Since November 2018, I have been working in the group of Quantum Optics and Spectroscopy founded by o. Univ.-Prof. Dr. R. Blatt at the University of Innsbruck. During this period, I have been working on two projects aimed to study and control the spontaneous emission of radiation. We developed an interferometric scheme to detect the motion of a dipolar scatteres. The method was applied to measure the oscillations of a single ion with quantum resolution and it was used to observe the oscillation of a trapped ion chain. In collaboration with the group of Quantum Interfaces lead by Prof. T. Northup (University of Innsbruck), we applied our technique for motion detection to a levitated nanoparticles for the study of quantum mechanics with nano-scale objects. In parallel, we are preparing an experimental setup where an ion can be trapped in the center of curvature of an hemispherical mirror. This experiment may allow to observe the complete suppression of spontaneous emission of a dipolar scatterer with applications in atomic physics, microscopy optomechanical physics.