Prof. Qian Niu, Department of Physics, UT-Austin

"Topology and Geometry of Bloch Electrons"

Coffee and cookies will be served at 3:45pm in RLM 4.102

Abstract: The 2016 Nobel Prize for physics was a grand celebration of our understanding of topological phases and transition, part of which dates back to pioneering work of David Thouless and his collaborators when I became a graduate student of him 36 years ago. I was fortunate to be able to witness and even participate in the development of this topological theory of Chern insulators at the beginning of my career. In this talk, I will give an “inside look” of the topological Chern numbers, not only from my personal perspective, but also concentrating on its physical content, the Berry curvatures, to see how such topological and geometrical concepts have transformed our view of solid state physics.