University of Innsbruck

Based in Innsbruck, Austria in midst of the beautiful Tyrolean alps, Helmut Ritsch's theory group is working on Quantum Optics and Cavity Quantum Electro­dynamics since 1993. We target a better under­standing of fundamental interactions between light and matter on a quantum level. Our main research interests are Self-Organization, Cavity Cooling, Superradiant Lasing, Quantum Simulation and Quantum Metrology.

Within iqClock the Innsbruck group will collaborate with all other iqClock groups to investigate the theoretical foundations of superradiant lasing and develop a corresponding open simulation framework based on QuantumOptics.jl, our quantum optics toolbox.

Our group has open PhD and postdoc positions.

Group webpage

Team members

Helmut Ritsch was born in 1962 in Mieders, Tyrol. He concluded his university studies at Innsbruck in 1989 with a PhD in physics. After some time spent as a Postdoc at various locations as Milano, Boulder or Konstanz  in 1993 he completed his habilitation in theoretical physics. From that point on he has been leading a Quantum Optics and Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics research group at the university of Innsbruck. In almost three decades of academia Helmut Ritsch has been awarded many prestigious prizes, he has been guest lecturer at numerous renowned institutions around the world and he is routinely invited to present at colloquia and conferences. He is married and has two daughters. In his spare time he likes to enjoy nature, mostly in the form of sports like skiing or mountain biking.
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Contact: [email protected]

Laurin Ostermann is a junior PostDoc in the group of Helmut Ritsch. He received his PhD in October 2016 at Innsbruck and his thesis “Collective Radiation of Coupled Atomic Dipoles and the Precise Measurement of Time” touches on many aspects relevant to the present proposal: seminal deliberations on decay channels in ensembles of interacting emitters, using super-/sub-radiant states in an optical lattice clock Ramsey scheme, optimizing lattice geometries of optical clocks as well as investigating properties of superradiant lasing, etc.

Contact: [email protected]
Personal webpage

David Plankensteiner is a PhD student in the group of Helmut Ritsch. He finished his Master's in 2014 also in the research group of Helmut Ritsch and continued as a PhD student in 2015. His main focus of research has been the investigation of dipole-dipole interacting quantum emitters. While he is still active in this field, he also started looking at new schemes for superradiant laser setups. Furthermore, he is actively developing the numerical quantum optics framework QuamtumOptics.jl in the Julia programming language.


Contact: david[email protected]

Christoph Hotter is a PhD student in the group of Helmut Ritsch. He finished his Master’s in January 2019 also in the research group of Helmut Ritsch. The title of his thesis is “Superradiant Cooling, Trapping and Lasing of Dipole-Interacting Clock Atoms”. Immediately afterwards he started his PhD within the iqClock project.

​Raphael Holzinger is a PhD student in the group of Helmut Ritsch. He finished his Master's in March 2019 also in the research group of Helmut Ritsch. The title of his thesis is 'Subradiance in Atomic Arrays with a V-Type Level Structure'. Immediately afterwards he started his PhD within the iqClock project.