Condensed Matter Seminar - Naren Manjunath, "What's inside a parameterized family?"
- Event Type
- Seminar/Symposium
- Sponsor
- Department of Physics
- Location
- ESB 190
- Date
- Feb 17, 2025 4:00 pm
- Speaker
- Naren Manjunath, Perimeter Institute
- Contact
- Thierry Ramais
- ramais@illinois.edu
- Phone
- 217-333-2020
- Views
- 143
- Originating Calendar
- Physics - Condensed Matter Seminar
Abstract: The Thouless charge pump, the Berry-Chern number of a spin in a magnetic field, and their recent generalizations to higher dimensions are important examples of parameterized topological families of gapped ground states. One way to realize such families is by spontaneously breaking a continuous G symmetry down to a subgroup H. The resulting Goldstone modes can carry topological terms, and if we further gap out the Goldstone modes, we get a parameterized family. Our main result is that the possible families are constrained by the anomaly of the original G symmetric state, with the full structure given by a 'compatibility relation'. Separately, I will discuss examples of topological families from classical physics, and their potential usefulness in understanding phase transitions.