These prestigious fellowships, created in conjunction with the appointment of Prof Shivaji Sondhi to the Wykeham and Leverhulme Professorship of Physics support the most talented theoretical physicists worldwide at an early stage of their careers
Jasmine Brewer
A liquid of quarks and gluons
Quarks and gluons are the fundamental constituents of all matter in the universe, but they have the unique property that they are always confined inside hadrons. The only situation in which quarks and gluons are deconfined is in extremely high-energy collisions of heavy nuclei, where the temperature is so high that nuclei “melt” into a new phase of matter called the quark-gluon plasma. This exotic state of matter provides a gateway to study the rich many-body physics of free quarks and gluons, including their rapid thermalization to form the most perfect liquid ever observed. I will cover recent progress on studying the properties of the quark-gluon plasma, and describe how we can capitalize on lessons learned from high-energy physics to provide new insights on this novel material.
Podcast
Alessio Lerose
Simulating physics beyond computer power
Since their birth computers proved invaluable tools for physics research. Quantum mechanics, however, fundamentally challenges the possibility for computers to simulate dynamics of matter. In fact, solving the quantum-mechanical law of motion requires to account for contributions of all possible joint configuration histories of all constituents of a system: a task that quickly becomes unbearable for any imaginable computer. Our understanding of complex phenomena involving important quantum-mechanical effects, such as chemical reactions, high-temperature superconducting materials, as well as the primordial universe evolution, is obstructed by this fundamental technological limitation. In this talk I will discuss the seminal idea by R. Feynman and others, of simulating Nature via a controllable quantum system rather than a classical computer . I will discuss recent advances that brought us closer to the ultimate goal of a universal quantum simulator .
Podcast
Benedikt Placke
The Miracle of Quantum Error Correction
Quantum computing is a new model of computation that holds the promise of significantly improved performance over classical computing for some problems of interest. However, by its very nature quantum computers are sensitive to disturbance by external noise, most likely necessitating the use quantum error correction (QEC) for useful application. In this talk, I will first introduce QEC and explain how the unique interplay between the classical and the quantum world enables us to efficiently correct errors effecting such systems. Furthermore, I will comment on the deep connection between QEC and questions in condensed matter physics.
Podcast
