In October 2019 I joined the Institute of Quantum Technologies which is being established in Ulm by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and am currently leading a 5-year project that investigates phenomena at the interface of Quantum Mechanics and Gravitation (Q-GRAV).

From 2011 until 2019 I had led a group at the Quantum Physics Institute of Ulm University conducting research on BECs and ultracold atoms in microgravity and their application to high-precision measurements based on atom interferometry. Our group provided theoretical support within the QUANTUS collaboration, which is funded by the German Space Agency (DLR) and involves a number of mainly experimental groups in Germany.

The collaboration's microgravity experiments are carried out at ZARM's Drop Tower in Bremen and on sounding rockets. MAIUS 1, the first rocket mission, was successfully completed on 23 January 2017 and accomplished the creation of the first BEC in space ever (it is also the first experiment in space with cold atoms and with atom interferometry). More information on the MAIUS 1 mission can be found in DLR's press release and a short movie of the rocket launch is available here. The achievement was also highlighted in an article published in Der Spiegel Online (in German).

We are also collaborating with NASA on the realization of joint experiments with ultracold atoms on the International Space Station (ISS).

Research Interests

My research interests and previous research experience span a wide range of topics including non-equilibrium quantum field theory, open quantum systems, cosmology and black hole physics. However, these are the main research areas in which I have been more actively involved in recent years:

• Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) in microgravity

• Atom interferometry

• Classical and quantum gravity

• Relativistic quantum information and space quantum links

Publications

A list of my publications is available in Google Scholar.  See also my page on ResearchGate and ORCID.

Selected publications in recent years:

• Albert Roura, Circumventing Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in atom interferometry tests of the equivalence principle, Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 160401 (2017).

• K. Bongs, M. Holynski, J. Vovrosh, P. Bouyer, G. Condon, E. Rasel, C. Schubert, W. P. Schleich and A. Roura, Taking atom interferometric quantum sensors from the laboratory to real-world applications, Nature Reviews Physics 1, 731 (2019).

• Albert Roura, Gravitational redshift in quantum-clock interferometry, Phys. Rev. X 10, 021014 (2020).

• Albert Roura, Quantum probe of space-time curvature, Science 375, 142 (2022).

International Teams and Committees

• Member of the Management Committee of an EU COST Action on Quantum Technologies in Space.

• Member of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Topical Team on ACES and General Relativity in connection with the ACES (Atomic Clock Ensemble in Space) experiment on the ISS.

• Advisor to NASA's Science Definition Team for the Deep Space Quantum Link project, recognized with a “NASA Group Achievement Award”.

• Member of the Steering Committee and Coordinator of one of the three Working Groups in the ELGAR International Research Network (European Laboratory for Gravitation and Atom-interferometric Research).

• Co-Chair of ESA’s Physical Sciences Working Group (PSWG), the advisory body of the European Space Agency for the physical sciences, and ex officio member of the Space Science Advisory Committee (SSAC).

Conferences organized 

• Organizer of the international conference on Gravitational decoherence sponsored by the WE Heraeus Foundation.

• Member of the Executive Committee of the ACES Workshop: Fundamental and applied science with clocks and cold atoms in space.

• Member of the Executive Committee of the ACES Workshop 2019.

• Member of the Executive Committee of the ACES Workshop 2022.

• Member of the Organizing Committee of the international conference Quantum Fields and Gravity.

• Organizer of the ACES Workshop 2023, hosted by DLR in Ulm.

• Member of the Organizing Committee of the international Workshop ELGAR, a future European Laboratory for Gravitation and Atom-interferometric Research.

• Convener of the Physics session in the 2nd Terrestrial Very-Long-Baseline Atom Interferometry Workshop.

• Member of the Scientific Committee of the ACES Workshop 2024.

Outreach (selected recent activities)

• Einstein inside: an exhibition created to commemorate the 100th anniversary of general relativity. It was inaugurated at the Urania (Berlin) on 25 November 2015 and has been shown in many cities around Germany since then.

I was responsible for the content of the stand on Quantenexperimenten in der Schwerelosigkeit – Tests von Grundlagen der Allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie mit Hilfe von Materiewellen (Quantum experiments in microgravity – Testing the foundations of general relativity with matter waves).

• Lecture on Urknalltheorie und die Verbindung zwischen Hochenergiephysik und Kosmologie (Big-Bang theory and the connections between high-energy physics and cosmology) for the studium generale at Ulm University, 23 May 2016.

• Focus article on Gezeitenkräfte im Quantenmaßstab (Tidal forces at quantum scales) published in Physik Journal (July 2017). The article reports in a pedagogical and non-technical style on recent experiments carried out in Stanford where the effect of the spacetime curvature across a quantum superposition of two spatially separated wave packets was measured for the first time.

Physik Journal is the journal of the German Physical Society (the largest in the world, with ca 62,000 members) and has a broad readership, including many physics students and high-school teachers.

• Invited series of lectures on Fundamental physics applications of atom interferometry within the 10th Relativistic Quantum Information – North (RQI-N 2019) Conference and School organized in Taiwan (27 May – 1 June 2019) on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the International Society for Relativistic Quantum Information (ISRQI).

• Invited lectures on Fundamental physics applications of atom interferometry within the Autumn School on Clocks, Cavities and Fundamental Physics organized in Poland (15 – 20 September 2019) by the EU Quantum Flagship project iqClock.

• Keynote talk on Quantum Technologies in Space at the European Quantum Technologies Conference (EQTC 2021) organized in Dublin (29 November – 2 December 2021) by the EU Quantum Flagship initiative (video, slides).

• Invited Review Talk on Long-baseline quantum optics experiments in space at the 13th Annual Conference on Relativistic Quantum Information (North) organized in Chania, Crete (17 – 21 July 2023) under the auspices of the ISRQI.

Teaching

Besides the supervision of a number of master and PhD students, I have given the following lectures as part of my teaching activities during the last few years:

• Third-year bachelor course on Nuclear/particle physics and astrophysics (WS2015-16, WS2016-17).

• Master course on Atom interferometry – Theory and applications (WS2014-15).

• Master course on Particle Physics – A study course (WS2013-14), together with Prof. Othmar Marti.