Quantum simulation of ultrafast and quasiperiodic systems with ultracold strontium

This poster discusses experiments using degenerate strontium atoms for the quantum emulation of ultrafast dynamics and quasicrystals. Trapped atoms subjected to a time-varying force field are used to emulate the ultrafast response of bound electrons or nuclei exposed to the electric field of a pulsed laser. The simulator operates in regimes equivalent to those of ultrafast and strong-field pulsed-laser experiments, opening up a hitherto unexplored application of quantum simulation techniques and a complementary path towards investigating open questions in ultrafast science. Separately, we study the dynamical response of atoms in a quasiperiodic bichromatic lattice to rapid modulation of the phasonic degree of freedom. Such excitations are typically frozen out as strain in solid-state quasicrystals; these measurements thus represent a new spectroscopic probe of quasicrystals which is inaccessible to traditional experiments.