Ideas and concepts from topology have inspired significant advances in our understanding of matter in the recent years. The new topological paradigm emphasizes the importance of global properties of a system as opposed to the conventional focus on local properties such as the orbital configurations constituting an electronic band. From the classical successes of topological description such as the quantum Hall effect and spin quantum Hall, more recent examples include topological protection arguments guaranteeing the presence of gapless surface states in topological insulators and semi-metals. As a consequence, new low-energy excitations mimicking relativistic Fermionic particles in three-dimensions have by now been well established in Dirac- and Weyl-semimetals and thus enabled their investigation in tabletop physics experiments. New physical observables related to the emergence of the quasiparticle chirality have been predicted and are at the center of attention in the experimental community, such as excess conductivity in high magnetic fields due to the chiral anomaly.

 

At the same time the traditional approaches of translation of topological concepts to band structures appear to have reached their goals, with the development of complete classifications of insulating and semi-metallic systems and the identification categories of Weyl and Dirac Fermions existing in three-dimensional crystals, including those forbidden as elementary excitations due to the Lorentz-invariance such as type-II Dirac nodes.

 

Yet the journey of topological concepts in condensed matter physics is just beginning, and the aim of this workshop is to identify new directions to explore topological physics, both theoretically and experimentally. This includes novel materials with non-trivial topologies, strongly interacting topological Fermions and advances in the classification schemes of topological matter. Specially, this workshop is the third one in a series of workshops for young research leaders (the second one in 2017), initiated in 2016 within the SPICE program at the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz. Building on the success of past conferences in this series, we hope to foster scientific connections between young researchers in the field, and to explore the potential for new collaborations.

 

We are looking forward to the opportunity to meet and discuss at the Weizmann Institute,

 

Raquel, Philip, Binghai

Deadline for Registration:
April 20, 2018

Organizers

  • Raquel Queiroz, WIS
  • Philip Moll, MPI-CPfS
  • Binghai Yan, WIS

Coordinator & Accessibility Issues

Naomi Dicken
naomi.bendoli@weizmann.ac.il

Sponsors

  • Max Planck Institute for the Chemical Physics of Solids
  • The Chorafas Institute for Scientific Exchange
  • Charlotte and Jacques Wolf Conference Fund
  • Spin Phenomena Interdisciplinary Center (SPICE)

Poster