Speaker
Lukasz Fidkowski
Description
Topological insulators constitute a different phase of quantum
matter from ordinary insulators, despite not breaking any
symmetries. They are an example of a `symmetry protected
topological' phase, in that they exhibit exotic phenomena,
namely gapless surface modes, that are entirely protected by
time reversal symmetry. Motivated by this, one can classify
all possible non-trivial topological insulators in all dimensions
and symmetry classes at the level of band structures.
However, the role of interactions in this scheme is still not
completely understood. In this talk I'll describe our recent
work on classifying interacting analogues of topological
insulators, and constructing exactly solvable lattice
realizations of them, which may allow them to be targeted by
numerical algorithms.
