On Thursday, November 27, we have a new appointment with a SO-IFIC Colloquium delivered by Professor Michael Spannowsky from Durham University.
In this colloquium, Professor Spannowsky will discuss how quantum computing is transforming the way we conceive computation in fundamental physics. High-energy physics offers new avenues for simulating strongly interacting quantum systems, accelerating data analysis, and designing learning architectures inspired by quantum mechanics itself. This talk will describe how key problems in field theory—ranging from lattice gauge dynamics and non-perturbative evolution to the modeling of parton showers—can be reformulated for quantum devices using gate-based paradigms and quantum annealing.

A second approach will focus on quantum machine learning, where variational quantum circuits, quantum-informed neural networks, and hybrid quantum-classical optimizers are explored as tools for event classification in colliders and anomaly detection. Spannowsky will present recent implementations on quantum hardware, discuss their performance compared to classical methods, and highlight how concepts from quantum geometry and Fisher information provide a unifying framework for both simulation and learning. Taken together, these developments outline steps toward integrating quantum computing into the experimental and theoretical workflow of particle physics.

Michael Spannowsky is a Professor of Theoretical Physics at Durham University and Director of the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology (IPPP), the UK’s National Centre for Particle Phenomenology. He studied physics at the University of Tübingen, completed his PhD at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and held postdoctoral positions at the University of Karlsruhe and the University of Oregon before joining Durham in 2011. His research focuses on particle phenomenology at current and future colliders, physics beyond the Standard Model, and the application of quantum-computing and machine-learning methods in high-energy physics. He is actively involved in international collaborations on collider physics and quantum technologies.

This colloquium promises an introduction to new ways of conceiving fundamental physics.

This colloquium is part of grant CEX2023-001292-S, funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033.