Ultracold quantum simulators

In 1981 Richard Feynman envisioned a quantum machine that could imitate any quantum system including the physical world itself Though we are of course still quite far from the ambitious goal of Feynman over the past decades experimentalists gained more and more control over ultracold atomic systems thereby opening up the possibility of engineering and investigating well known but poorly understood interacting quantum systems as well as designing new quantum states of matter In this colloquium I will review some of the most fascinating experiments in this exciting field and show through a few examples how these controlled systems can be used to address fundamental issues such as thermalization and equilibration of closed quantum systems and gain insight to them through quantum simulations tested against quantum field theories how they can be used to measure the so called Loschmidt echo or to investigate the structure of an Anderson localized state Refreshments are served at 3:20pm