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Research Zernike (ZIAM) News Colloquia

Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials Colloquium Joel Moore

When:Th 16-05-2013 at 16:00
Where:FSE-Building 5111.0080

Speaker: prof.dr. Joel Moore
Affiliation: Department of Physics, UC Berkeley, and Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA
Title: t.b.a.
Date: Thu May 16, 2013
Start: 16:00
Location: FSE-Building 5111.0080

ABSTRACT:

Much of condensed matter physics is concerned with understanding how different kinds of order emerge from interactions between a large number of simple constituents. In ordered phases such as crystals, magnets, and superfluids, the order is understood through symmetry breaking.

A major discovery of the 1980s was that electrons confined to two dimensions and in a strong magnetic field exhibit a completely different, "topological" order in the quantum Hall regime. �Topological order was recently discovered insome three-dimensional materials, dubbed topological insulators, in zero magnetic field. Spin-orbit coupling, an ntrinsic property of all solids, drives the formation of the topological state.

The first part of the talk will explain how topological insulators were predicted and discovered by building on the quantum Hall effect. �The second part will cover more recent work on connections between topological insulators, magnetoelectric effects ("axion electrodynamics"), and strong correlation effects.