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Speaker: Guillaume Bal (U. Chicago)

Title: Asymmetric transport in topological insulators

Abstract: A salient feature of two-dimensional topological insulators is the surprising robustness to perturbation of the asymmetric transport observed along interfaces separating distinct insulating bulks. Such a robustness has a topological origin and may be interpreted as an unexpected obstruction to Anderson localization. This talk reviews recent classifications of partial differential Hamiltonians modeling such systems. We present a general bulk-edge correspondence relating a hard-to-compute analytical index describing the asymmetry to an easy-to-compute topological index naturally associated to the Hamiltonian. The theory finds applications in many wave phenomena in electronics, photonics, and geophysics.