Talks

"We are faced with convincing evidence that approximately a quarter of the universe is composed of something whose gravitational effects can be seen in a variety of astrophysical phenomena, but which we have been unable to detect and identify in the laboratory. The majority of physicists agree that this ""dark matter"" (DM) consists of as-yet-undiscovered subatomic particle(s) that are not included in our Standard Model of particle physics; the quest to discover its exact nature is among the foremost missions in modern physics and the greatest treasure hunts in history. Direct DM searches over the past few decades have been largely focused on Weakly Interacting Massive Particles with masses much greater than that of the proton. The absence of any conclusive discovery, along with various theoretical developments and certain astrophysical observations, has recently motivated the direct detection community to broaden our experimental program to search for DM candidates in lower mass ranges. Solid-state detectors provide many advantages for such searches. This talk will summarize recent advances in phonon- and ionization-based semiconductor crystal experiments, cryogenic scintillating calorimeter experiments, and Charge-Coupled Device experiments. It will also discuss future prospects and discovery potential for solid-state detectors with respect to various low-mass DM candidates, including dark photons, axion-like particles, and lightly-ionizing particles."

"In this talk, I will share insights from my journey in driving innovation within the quantum space across various sectors, including space, financial services, healthcare & pharmaceuticals and across various emerging technologies. Drawing from my current role at the National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC), I will discuss the transformative potential of quantum readiness driven by the adoption of quantum computing use cases. I will briefly introduce the NQCC, which was established under the UK government's National Quantum Technologies Program, to address the challenge of scaling quantum computing and discuss the various support mechanisms we have put in place to support the quantum ecosystem in the Uk, including our flagship user engagement program, SPARQ. Through these initiatives, the NQCC supports the discovery of relevant quantum computing use cases and spearheads the development of quantum computing applications. Throughout the talk, I will emphasize the importance of engaging stakeholders from government, industry, academia, as well as regulators and policymakers to spearhead responsible innovation."

In this talk, I’ll discuss the deep connection between emergent k-form symmetries and transversal logical gates in quantum low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. I’ll then present a parallel fault-tolerant quantum computing scheme for families of homological quantum LDPC codes defined on 3-manifolds with constant or almost-constant encoding rate using the underlying higher symmetries in our recent work. We derive a generic formula for a transversal T gate on color codes defined on general 3-manifolds, which acts as collective non-Clifford logical CCZ gates on any triplet of logical qubits with their logical-X membranes having a Z2 triple intersection at a single point. The triple intersection number is a topological invariant, which also arises in the path integral of the emergent higher symmetry operator in a topological quantum field theory (TQFT): the (Z2) 3 gauge theory. Moreover, the transversal S gate of the color code corresponds to a higher-form symmetry supported on a codimension-1 submanifold, giving rise to exponentially many addressable and parallelizable logical CZ gates. Both symmetries are related to gauged SPT defects in the (Z2) 3 gauge theory. We have then developed a generic formalism to compute the triple intersection invariants for general 3- manifolds. We further develop three types of LDPC codes supporting such logical gates with constant or almost-constant encoding rate and logarithmic distance. Finally, I’ll point out a connection between the gauged SPT defects in the 6D color code and a recently discovered non-Abelian self-correcting quantum memory in 5D. Reference: arXiv:2310.16982, arXiv:2208.07367, arXiv:2405.11719.

Hot viscous plasmas unavoidably emit a gravitational wave background, similar to electromagnetic black body radiation. In this talk we will discuss the contribution from hidden particles to the diffuse background emitted by the primordial plasma in the early universe. While this contribution can easily dominate over that from Standard Model particles, both are capped by a generic upper bound that makes them difficult to detect with interferometers in the foreseeable future. We will illustrate our results on the examples of axion-like particles and heavy neutral leptons. We will also discuss how this bound affects the previous estimates of gravitational wave backgrounds from particle decays out of thermal equilibrium.

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In this talk, I will explain how to implement fault-tolerant non-Clifford gates in copies of toric code in two dimensions achieved by transiently switching to a non-Abelian topologically ordered phase by expanding earlier results by Bombin [arXiv.1810.09571] and Brown [SciAdv.aay4929]. This addresses the challenge of performing universal fault-tolerant quantum computation in purely two spatial dimensions and shows a new approach to quantum computation using non-Abelian phases. This talk is based on upcoming work in collaboration with A. Bauer, B.Brown, J. Magdalena de la Fuente, M. Webster and D. Williamson.

Quantum error correction methods for qubit technologies such as ions, photons, or superconducting qubits can appear very different at first glance. Moreover, as more detailed error models are accounted for, the relationship to the abstract models of fault tolerance can appear to become more distant. In this talk I will discuss two unifying frameworks which connect hardware specific models more closely to the underlying code structures, which can help enable QEC development. First I will introduce a unifying framework for fault tolerance based on the ZX calculus (arXiv:2303.08829) and show how it allows us to view circuit-based, measurement-based, fusion-based quantum computation, and Floquet codes as different flavors of the same underlying stabilizer fault-tolerance structure. Secondly I will introduce fusion complexes (arXiv:2308.07844) which allows a topological interpretation of fault tolerance even under circuit level error models. Both of these frameworks are tools that can aid in the design of quantum error correction methods under hardware-focussed models, and I will give some examples of this applied to the design of photonic architectures.

What is the structure of many-body quantum phases and transitions in the presence of non-unitary elements, such as decoherence or measurements? In this talk we explore two new directions. First, recent works have shown that even if one starts with an ideal preparation of topological order such as the toric code, decoherence can lead to interesting mixed states with subtle phase transitions [e.g., Fan et al, arXiv:2301.05689]. Motivated by a recent experimental realization of non-Abelian topological order [Iqbal et al, Nature 626 (2024)], we generalize this to decohered non-Abelian states, based on work with Pablo Sala and Jason Alicea [to appear]. Second, we study whether and how one can prepare pure states which are already detuned from ideal fixed-point cases---with tunable correlation lengths. This turns out to be possible for large classes of tensor network states which can be deterministically prepared using finite-depth measurement protocols. This is based on two recent works with Rahul Sahay [arXiv:2404.17087; arXiv:2404.16753].