PGI Kolloquium:
Prof. Dr. Bogdan A. Bernevig,
Princeton University, New Jersey, USA
PGI Lecture Hall, Building 04.8, 2nd Floor, Room 365
- Anfang
- 24.05.2019 11:00 Uhr
Topological Quantum Chemistry and The Topological Periodic Table of Materials
Copyright: https://topologicalquantumchemistry.com/#/
One newly discovered characterization of insulators, metals and semimetals is based on their topological properties. Topological insulators do not conduct in the bulk but, unlike their non-Topological counterparts, exhibit perfect conduction on their surface.
Topological metals conduct in the bulk, but, unlike their non-Topological counterparts cannot be gapped due to a special type of protection that allows their low energy electrons to exhibit esoteric phenomena such as chiral anomaly or non-local transport.
It was initially thought that the materials exhibiting these phenomena are very special and unique amongst all of the 140000 compounds known to humankind. We will present a review of these ideas and properties of topological materials. We will then show how, using a new theory called Topological Quantum Chemistry, we are able to now catalogue a large subset (35000) of all the topological materials that can possibly exist in nature.
We then apply our theory to find that more than 27% of all known compounds - including some of the most interesting materials in nature - are actually topological. We hence live in a topological world!