Aalto Physics Colloquium: Prof. Bogdan Andrei Bernevig

Welcome to the first  Aalto Physics Colloquium of 2020. The event will be held on Thursday 9th January 2020 at 14.00-15.00.

Coffee and cake will be served after the presentation, from 15.00 - 15.30. Please register here if you plan to attend, so that we have enough refreshments for all!

Our distinguished guest, Prof. Bogdan Andrei Bernevig, Professor of Physics at Princeton University, will present his research on "Topological Quantum Chemistry and The Topological Periodic Table of Material".

Colloquium abstract: 

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 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 40% of all known compounds - including some of the most interesting materials in nature - are actually topological. We hence live in a topological world! We will give examples of new states, including fragile states, twisted Moire patterns, and hinge arcs, that have all been discovered to exhibit topological properties.