Robert Osburn
Visiting Professorship: James M. Flaherty
Brief Description of Work: Knots are objects which appear in nature, science and the arts. They pose particularly beautiful and difficult challenges, e.g., constructing rigorous tests (“invariants”) for determing whether two knots are equivalent. Quantum knot invariants (qKI) have their origin in the seminal works of two Fields medalists, Vaughan Jones (1984) and Edward Witten (1988) and have fundamental applications in the interdisciplinary research areas of industrial compounds, robotic manipulation, textile structure, DNA analysis, quantum modularity and stability and the Arts. The goal of this project is to explore the new emerging topic of qKI and their applications to topological quantum computation (TQC).
Home University: University College Dublin
Institution to Visit: McMaster University
Links: Profile on UCD website here.