Strongly disordered and amorphous topological insulators

Seminário Virtual | Monday, August 29, 2022 | 14:00:00
Speaker:
Caio Lewenkopf
Topological materials are characterized by topological invariants whose evaluation usually relies on translational symmetry. As a consequence, the natural question that arises is: Can strongly disordered, non-crystalline, and amorphous display topological properties? Substantial theoretical work shows that this is indeed the case. I begin this talk with a review of the basic properties of topological insulators, the implications of topological protection, and related experiments. Next, I discuss the most important advances in the research of strongly disordered and/or amorphous topological insulators, illustrating the main results using simple lattice models. Finally, I will present our ab initio studies that aim at proposing physical realizations of amorphous topological insulators.