From Quantum Computers to the Faintest Galaxies

Quantum computing is one of today's buzzwords. But what are these esoteric systems? What can we do with them? And how useful are they? These are open questions even the experts have trouble answering. For example, no one has demonstrated the much anticipated 'Quantum Supremacy', the point at which quantum computers are shown to be more powerful than modern computers (although google claims to be close!). Quantum Computing is now a research industry with around £1.5 Billion invested worldwide. I will talk about the research ongoing at Durham and how we help this ongoing international effort.

In our understanding of the Universe, most of the matter content in the Universe is in some mysterious invisible form, called “dark matter”, and galaxies are thought to be living in the center of dark matter halos. We can explain the broad properties of brighter galaxies; However, the properties of the faintest galaxies (the so called “dwarf galaxies”) in the Universe seems off with our theoretical predictions. This is challenging our understanding of the Universe. I will present the current theory, the evidence for the existence of dark matter and the challenges raised by dwarf galaxies.