01110 or Everyt hing Condensed Matter wanted to know about Topology (but was afraid to ask)

07.11.2016 16:00 – 18:00

Some time ago a theoretical revolution took place under the impulse of Kosterlitz and Thouless and Haldane.
Their works and the enormous impact that they had on the community was finally rewarded by the Physics Nobel Prize 2016.This Nobel prize was on a subject and with a title more frightening for the media and the grand public than the «usual» topics.

I will thus review in this colloquium both the concepts and the historical aspects of their discovery, and try to explain why it was such a revolution both for classical and
quantum systems to start worrying about topology. This rather abstract concept will take us through very tangible physical systems such as films made of superconducting material, the measurement of the Hall resistance in metals, or the magnetic properties of solids.

Today the works of the three Nobel laureates have led us to see matter with a very different point of view and have also led to novel territories and the discovery of new systems such as the so-called topological insulators and superconductors.

Lieu

Bâtiment: Ecole de Physique

Auditoire Stueckleberg

entrée libre