Event Details

Some 2D quantum many-body systems with a bulk energy gap have the property that they support gapless edge modes which are extremely robust. These modes cannot be gapped out or localized by general classes of interactions or disorder at the edge: they are "protected" by the structure of the bulk phase. A basic problem is how to predict, for general interacting systems, when such edge modes are present or absent. In this talk, I will discuss this problem for some simple classes of topological phases.