Ytterbium Quantum Gases
The major goal of this project is to combine the benefits of optical lattice clocks and ultracold degenerate Fermi gases. For this purpose we have set up a machine capable of the production of ultracold ytterbium quantum gas mixtures inside an optical lattice. The specific properties of ytterbium, namely a very favorably distribution of natural abundances of various isotopes, the existence of a very narrow so called optical clock transition and a correspondingly long lived meta-stable state as well as the SU(N) symmetric interaction of the fermionic isotopes allows for the investigation of exotic quantum matter. In particular the meta-stable excited state opens the door for the study of lattice systems with an additional orbital degree of freedom. To this end we strive to investigate the Kondo-lattice model, which is a paradigm for strongly correlated many-body systems. Controlled losses can also be invoked in ytterbium quantum gases and allow to investigate open quantum systems, which we use to study the dissipative Fermi-Hubbard model.