Introduction to topological phases of matter

Title: Introduction to topological phases of matter

 

Format: 5 weeks, 2x1hour sessions, online on Teams

 

Assessment: Weekly marked exercise sheets

 

Summary: We introduce topological phases of matter that can arise in condensed matter systems. These phases cannot be simply characterised in terms of local symemtries, and exhibit exotic phenomena such as protected boundary-dependent edge modes and the emergence of anyonic point-like excitations, different to fermions or bosons. We split our introduction into two parts: 1) looking at topological insulators / superconductors, 2) introducing topological quantum field theories.