Francesca Ferlaino (born 1977) is an Italian-Austrian experimental physicist known for her research on quantum matter.
She did a PhD in physics at the University of Florence and the European Laboratory for Non-Linear Spectroscopy (LENS) (2001–2004).
[6] With these systems, she has explored a variety of many-body quantum phenomena dictated by the long-range and anisotropic dipolar interaction among the atoms.
[7] In 2024 her team reported the observation of quantum vortices in the supersolid phase[8][9] Her work has earned her multiple awards, including the Grand Prix de Physique "Cécile-DeWitt Morette/École de Physique des Houches" from the French Academy of Sciences (2019),[10] the Junior BEC Award (2019),[11] the Feltrinelli Prize (2017)[12] and the Erwin Schrödinger Prize (2017),[13] the highest award of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
In addition, she is the recipient of an Alexander von Humboldt Professorship (2013),[14] a START-Prize (2009) and three ERC Grants (Starting 2010, Consolidator 2016 and Advanced 2022)[15] She was elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) in 2019, after a nomination from the APS Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, "for ground-breaking experiments on dipolar quantum gases of erbium atoms, including the attainment of quantum degeneracy of bosons and fermions, studies on quantum-chaotical scattering, the formation of quantum droplets, and investigations on the roton spectrum".