Department: Theoretical Physics, Maynooth University Position: Postgraduate Research Student (Currently undertaking a 2 year research masters)
Current Research: I am currently looking at spinor Bose-Einstein condensates and how these may be used to realise topological quantum computation. Within these condensates, the creation of vortices is permitted. These vortices can be moved around each other and merged together. When treating vortices in this way, they can be viewed as anyons whose braiding and fusion allows the storing of information analogous to qubits. I hope to simulate this braiding and fusion of vortices in Bose-Einstein condensates of different spin in order to investigate the viability of quantum computation in these systems.
Acknowledgements: I would like to acknowledge the funding I am receiving from the Irish Research Council in order to carry out this current research.