Holon Physics Seminar 17.1.17
"Topological Phases of Fermions and Parafermions with Symmetries"
Dr. Dganit Meidan, Ben Gurion University
January 17, 2017 | 14:00 | Room 424/8
Abstract:
Transport properties provide a prominent tool to probe topological phases in one-dimensional systems. The presence of gapless modes confined to the system ends affects the scattering of non-interacting fermions when the system is connected to leads. I will review some recent advances in the topological classification of fermonic chains in the presence of a modified time reversal symmetry that satisfies T^2 = 1.
I will then show that the topological index can be formulated using scattering matrix invariants, even when interactions are present. Finally, I will generalize these results to study the classification of parafermionic chains.
Such chains can be realized in one dimensional structures embedded in fractionalized two dimensional states of matter, e.g. at the edges of a fractional quantum spin Hall system, where counter propagating modes may be gapped either by back-scattering or by coupling to a superconductor.
