Dresden 2014 – scientific programme

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TT: Fachverband Tiefe Temperaturen

TT 95: Focus Session: Theoretical Advances in Interacting Topological Phases (organized by TT)

TT 95.1: Invited Talk

Thursday, April 3, 2014, 15:30–16:00, HSZ 03

Fractional Topological Insulators — •Andrei Bernevig — Princeton University

Topological insulators are remarkable materials whose insulating "boring" bulk nonetheless gives rise to perfectly metallic edge or surface states not disturbed by disorder. In this talk, I will relay new phenomena beyond the recently discovered topological insulators with time-reversal symmetry. I will show that topological insulators exist with any point group symmetry, and, upon adding interactions, can transform in much more interesting systems. I will show that fractionally filling a band of a one-body topological insulator and then subjecting its electrons to repulsive interaction can create new states of matter non-existent in the continuum, whose quasiparticles exhibit non-abelian braiding. I will then show that a new description of these states in terms of matrix product forms can greatly enhance our capability to calculate their many-body properties.