Felix Palm - LMU München
1. Briefly describe your current position/project, research focus, and your role within MCQST.
I am a PhD student in Fabian Grusdt's group at LMU. Our group studies the theory of interacting quantum many-body systems using analytical and numerical methods. My own research focuses on so-called fractional Chern insulators, a certain subclass of such systems, which are now realized in cold atom quantum simulators for the first time.
2. You were a co-organizer of this year's IMPRS-QST Summer School. Could you describe what that experience was like?
Co-organizing the IMPRS-QST Summer School was a lot of fun! We had a one-week retreat in the Austrian Alps with lectures by experienced researchers from theory and experiment. Furthermore, we had some IMPRS Alumni visiting us to get an idea of what they are doing after their PhD as well as an industry session giving additional insight into the work of a physicist outside academia.
The support from our IMPRS coordinator Sonya was very helpful in coordinating the organizational details. Organizing all our PhD students, external speakers, and alumni and scheduling their contributions in a suitable way was an interesting challenge. We were very particularly happy to have many great contributions from our fellow PhD students. It's really amazing to see how many students are actively contributing to the IMPRS-QST and MCQST community.
It's really amazing to see how many students are actively contributing to the IMPRS-QST and MCQST community.
3. What current projects are you most excited about?
As briefly mentioned above, my research partially intersects with cold atom experiments. In the last months, a first experiment has successfully prepared a specific fractional Chern insulator. This progress currently sparks a lot of new research specializing on these platforms also on the theoretical side. Our group is part of this active community, which is a really stimulating and inspiring experience for me as a young researcher. The chance to see some of my theoretical ideas being tested in a lab in the near future especially motivates me to work on these projects!