Calendar event

A topological insulator is a material that is an insulator on its interior,
but has special conducting states on its surface. These surface
states are unlike any other known two dimensional conductor.
They are characterized by a unique Dirac type dispersion relation and
are protected by a topological property of materials' underlying
bulk electronic band structure. These materials have attracted
considerable interest as a fundamentally new electronic phase with
applications from quantum transport to quantum computing. In this
talk we will outline the theoretical discovery of this phase and describe
recent experiments in which its signatures have been observed in both two
and three dimensional systems. We will close by arguing that the
proximity effect between an ordinary superconductor and a 3D topological
insulator leads to a novel two dimensional interface state which may
provide a new venue for realizing proposals for topological quantum
computation.