Topological Condensend Matter Physics
Notes of a lecture series held by Titus Neupert and Sebastian Huber in spring 2021 at UZH and ETHZ.
The fascinating world of topological aspects of condesned matter systems is exposed in a 13 weeks lecture series. The course starts with the introduction of the most celebrated topological phase: the quantum Hall effect discovered in 1980. In the following chapters we develop the theoretical concepts that underpin the field of topological condensed matter physics. All topics are explained with the combination of abstract concepts and tangible illustatrations using the standard toy models. We finish the course by using our acquired knowledge to approach the magic of the fractional quantum Hall phases.
Below you find the chapter titles together with the respective learning goals and the pdf of the lecture notes for each week.
The entire Download lecture notes as a single file (PDF, 7.8 MB).
Accompaning exerices are available upon request.
Learning goals:
- We understand the Bogoliubov-de-Gennes representation of a mean-field superconducting Hamiltonian and its relation to a Majorana fermion representation.
- We know one-dimensional topological superconductors, their topological invariant, boundary modes and topological classification.
- We understand how interactions reduce the topological classification from Z to Z 8 in one-dimensional topological superconductors.
Learning goals:
- We understand how the topological classification of insulators and the bulk-boundary correspondence is enhanced by including crystalline symmetries.
- We know how topological invariants such as mirror-graded winding numbers and the mirror Chern number are defined.
- We have an understanding of higher-order topological insulators.
Learning goals:
- We know the physical motivation, Hamiltonian, and phase diagram of Kitaev’s honeycomb model.
- We understand how some phases reduce to the toric code Hamiltonian.
- We know how to rewrite the ground state and low-lying excitations in terms of Majorana degrees of freedom.
- We know the toric code model Hamiltonian and understand its ground state manifold.
- We know the emergent excitations above the ground states, and how to derive their statistics.
- The lecture notes of an older version of the course by Sebastian Huber can be found here.
- Further lectures notes on the topic by Titus Neupert can be obtained external page here.