Cold atom entanglement experiments

This year's lecture was mainly devoted to describing experiments on ultra-cold atoms confined in optical traps. It showed how the manipulation of cold atoms enables entanglement experiments and the preparation of mesoscopic superpositions of states. Part of the lecture was devoted to atoms trapped in optical lattices. These optical crystals of atoms are veritable quantum simulators of situations encountered in solid state physics, whose study leads to a fruitful rapprochement between quantum optics and Quantum Condensed Matter Physics.