Twisted Matter
| When |
May 13, 2019
from 11:00 to 12:00 |
|---|---|
| Where | Amphi. Schrödinger |
| Attendees |
David Carpentier |
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In the mid-twentieth century, the Nobel-prize winner George Gamow remarked only two abstract branches of mathematics had no application to physics : number theory and topology. Fifty years later, it is hard to think of an area of physics where topology does not feature. Over the last decade, topology sparked a new line of research in solid-sate physics, leading to the 2016 Physics Nobel prize. Today, the use of topology extends far beyond the specifics of solids and offers a single framework to understand phenomena from the atomic to the planetary scale. In this seminar I will first review how topology revolutionized our understanding of electronic properties of matter. I will then discuss two physical systems in which topology allows to unveil remarkable properties unrelated to electronic waves : (i) an artificial atom (or qubit) coupled to microwaves in such a way that it constantly pumps energy from one frequency into another one; (ii) an elastic Möbius strip, whose deformations do not satisfy linear response theory as a consequence of topological constraints.