Recent progress in nanophotonics and material science has inspired a strong interest in
optically-induced material dynamics, opening new research directions in the distinct fields of …

Gauge fields are central in our modern understanding of physics at all scales. At the highest
energy scales known, the microscopic universe is governed by particles interacting with …

The thermalization of isolated quantum many-body systems is deeply related to fundamental
questions of quantum information theory. While integrable or many-body localized systems …

Intriguingly, quantum many-body systems may defy thermalization even without disorder.
One example is so-called fragmented models, where the many-body Hilbert space …

In this thesis I report on experiments that enter a new regime in the many body physics of
ultracold atomic gases. A Bose-Einstein condensate is loaded into a three-dimensional …

Geometric phases that characterize the topological properties of Bloch bands play a
fundamental role in the band theory of solids. Here we report on the measurement of the …

Ever since its discovery the notion of Berry phase has permeated through all branches of
physics. Over the past three decades it was gradually realized that the Berry phase of the …

Dirac points are central to many phenomena in condensed-matter physics, from massless
electrons in graphene to the emergence of conducting edge states in topological insulators …

Atom interferometers have been developed in the last three decades as new powerful tools
to investigate gravity. They were used for measuring the gravity acceleration, the gravity …

The study of nonequilibrium phenomena in correlated lattice systems has developed into
one of the most active and exciting branches of condensed matter physics. This research …