ERC Starting Grant for Hamburg physicist

Dr. Christof Weitenberg, scientist at the Institute of Laser Physics, Hamburg, has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant worth around 1.5 million euros by the European Research Council. In a new research project entitled "Engineering and Exploring Anyonic Quantum Gases," ANYON for short, he plans to investigate so-called exotic particles existing only in special systems that have been subject to little research up until now: anyons. All particles in nature may be classed into one of two categories: fermions or bosons. Fermions encompass all particles that make up matter. They are subject to the Pauli exclusion principle, which states that two fermions can never occupy the same time or space simultaneously. Bosons, however, clump together to form a condensate. In two-dimensional systems a further category of particle exists: so-called anyons.