The field of atom optics has emerged thanks to the development of methods of cooling and trapping atoms with lasers, in the 1980’s. The discovery of Bose-Einstein condenstion of dilute atomic samples, in 1995, has allowed the development of atom lasers, that might boost the applications of atom optics, as photonic lasers have dramatically increased the number and impact of applications of optics.

On a more fundamental side, our group is pursuing an experimental research on quantum atom optics with metastable helium : the development of a time and space resolved, single atom detector, allows us to explore pure quantum phenomena, like the bosonic or fermionic atomic Hanbury Brown and Twiss effect.