Dr Alistair Kay

I research a broad range of topics in quantum information. My main interests are geared towards trying to reduce or tailor the practical requirements for a quantum computer with regards to practical considerations. In the past, this has included demonstrations of how quantum computation can be performed by either addressing every spin in the system simultaneously, or, alternativelym by addressing just a single spin in the system, and allowing the dynamics of the intrinsic Hamiltonian to do the rest.

I am currently focussed on exploring the properties of quantum memories; relatively simple systems that should be intrinsically robust against a range of decoherence effects. Such devices will be very important for future, long range, implementations of quantum cryptography, and could also form the basis of a move away from existing notions of fault-tolerance (the error correction mechanism required to prevent the build-up of errors in a long quantum computation, even if the error correction machinery itself is faulty) towards something with lower overheads.

One key notion in my research is transport properties in quantum systems, i.e. the ability to generate long range transmission of energy/information from localised interactions, and how these transport properties can aided or hindered by decoherence.