Niels Bohr Institutet > Kalender - det sker på NBI > 2010 > Topological Insulators...

Topological Insulators and Topological Band Theory. NBI-Lecture by Charles Kane

Abstract: Topological insulators are a new class of 2D or 3D electronic materials that have a bulk band gap like an ordinary insulator, but have unique conducting states on their edge or surface. These boundary states are unlike ordinary 1D and 2D conductors. Due to a special topological property they can not be localized, even by strong disorder.
In this talk we will outline the theoretical discovery of this phase and describe experiments that observed its signatures in 2D HgCdTe structures and 3D Bi_{1-x}Sb_x, Bi_2Se_3 and Bi_2Te_3 crystals. We will close by arguing that the interface between a topological insulator and a superconductor leads to an exotic state that can host Majorana fermions, which are particles that are their own antiparticles. These excitations exhibit non-Abelian quantum statistics, and could provide the building blocks for a topological quantum computer.

About the speaker: Charles Kane received his Ph.D. in physics from MIT in 1989. After a two year post doc at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center he joined the  faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is currently  Professor of Physics and Astronomy.
Professor Kane is a fellow of the  American Physical Society and is known for his theoretical work on the  quantum Hall effect, Luttinger liquids and carbon nanotubes. Recently  his research has focused on the theory of topological insulators.