Speaker
Description
The past two decades have witnessed remarkable advances in our understanding of topological matter. What began as a framework for describing electronic phases of matter has evolved into a powerful organizing principle. Today, topological phenomena are explored not only in electronic materials, but also in photonic, magnonic, acoustic, and even classical systems.
In this talk, I will illustrate how similar topological ideas reappear across seemingly unrelated physical platforms. In one dimension, polyacetylene, superconducting quantum wires, and photonic lattices can all be understood through the Zak phase. In two dimensions, the quantum Hall effect, spin-orbit-coupled quantum wells, and arrays of optical waveguides are connected through the Chern number and related topological invariants. In three dimensions, topological states give rise to surface states that behave as massless and sometimes massive Dirac particles.
The common structures underlying these realizations, teach us about the universality of topology and the power of analogies in physics.