Dr. Michael Schulz studies atomic physics with an emphasis on ion-atom collisions. His research is focused on obtaining a better understanding of the few-body problem, one of the unsolved fundamental problems in physics, which is highly relevant in areas well beyond atomic physics. To this end he performs so called kinematically complete experiments in ion-atom collision physics. A complete experiment is one which provides the maximum amount of information obtainable according to the laws of quantum mechanics.

Recent studies performed in his laboratory revealed that scattering cross sectons can sensitively depend on the projectile coherence properties, a crucially important aspect which hasbeen overlooked in decades of scattering theory. As a result, some of the vividly debated "puzzles" emerging from comparisons between experiment and theory in the past are now approaching a resolution.

Experimental techniques employed include projectile momentum spectroscopy, recoil ion momentum spectroscopy, electron momentum spectroscopy, and coincidence techniques. Furthermore, state-of-the-art ion sources, energy analyzers, position sensitive particle detectors etc. are developed.