Topological invariants for Standard Model: from semi-metal to topological insulator

Topology is now securely established as a means to explore and classify electronic states in crystalline solids. This review provides a gentle but firm introduction to topological electronic band structure suitable for new researchers in the field. I begin by outlining the relevant concepts from topology, then give a summary of the theory of non-interacting electrons in periodic potentials. Next, I explain the concepts of the Berry phase and Berry curvature, and derive key fo...

Ideas from quantum field theory and topology have proved remarkably fertile in suggesting new phenomena in the quantum physics of condensed matter. Here I'll supply some broad, unifying context, both conceptual and historical, for the abundance of results reported at the Nobel Symposium on "New Forms of Matter, Topological Insulators and Superconductors". Since they distill some most basic ideas in their simplest forms, these concluding remarks might also serve, for non-speci...

The electronic bands are classified according to their topology. We compute the connection and curvature for the electronic bands and show that the physical properties are determined by topological invariants which are equivalent to the existence of the zero modes. We apply this method to the Topological Insulators and Topogical Superconductors.

Many quantum condensed-matter systems, and probably the quantum vacuum of our Universe, are strongly correlated and strongly interacting fermionic systems, which cannot be treated perturbatively. However, physics which emerges in the low-energy does not depend on the complicated details of the system and is relatively simple. It is determined by the nodes in the fermionic spectrum, which are protected by topology in momentum space (in some cases, in combination with the vacuu...

We propose the concept of `topological Hamiltonian' for topological insulators and superconductors in interacting systems. The eigenvalues of topological Hamiltonian are significantly different from the physical energy spectra, but we show that topological Hamiltonian contains the information of gapless surface states, therefore it is an exact tool for topological invariants.

After briefly recalling the quantum entanglement-based view of topological phases of matter in order to outline the general context, we give an overview of different approaches to the classification problem of topological insulators and superconductors of non-interacting Fermions. In particular, we review in some detail general symmetry aspects of the "ten-fold way" which forms the foundation of the classification, and put different approaches to the classification in relatio...

Owing to the enormous interest the rapidly growing field of topological states of matter (TSM) has attracted in recent years, the main focus of this review is on the theoretical foundations of TSM. Starting from the adiabatic theorem of quantum mechanics which we present from a geometrical perspective, the concept of TSM is introduced to distinguish gapped many body ground states that have representatives within the class of non-interacting systems and mean field superconduct...

Built upon the previous work on the 4d anomalies and 5d cobordism invariants (namely, 5d invertible field theory [iTFT] or symmetry-protected topological state [SPTs]) of the Standard Model [SM] gauge theory with compatible (SU(3)$\times$SU(2)$\times$U(1))/$\mathbb{Z}_q$ gauge group for $q=1,2,3,6$, we further enumerate lower-dimensional iTFT / SPTs in 4d, 3d, 2d, and 1d. While the 4d SPTs are interesting gapped phases attachable to the SM, those integer classes of SPTs (eith...

Topological insulators are solid state systems of independent electrons for which the Fermi level lies in a mobility gap, but the Fermi projection is nevertheless topologically non-trivial, namely it cannot be deformed into that of a normal insulator. This non-trivial topology is encoded in adequately defined invariants and implies the existence of surface states that are not susceptible to Anderson localization. This non-technical review reports on recent progress in the und...

The methods of quantum field theory are widely used in condensed matter physics. In particular, the concept of an effective action was proven useful when studying low temperature and long distance behavior of condensed matter systems. Often the degrees of freedom which appear due to spontaneous symmetry breaking or an emergent gauge symmetry, have non-trivial topology. In those cases, the terms in the effective action describing low energy degrees of freedom can be metric ind...