Caroline Tornow, PhD student at ETH
Topological insulators behave like insulators in the bulk. At their edges, however, they possess stable, topologically protected conducting states. These characteristics were originally thought to be pure quantum effects. However, about a decade ago, Süsstrunk and Huber showed that they can also be observed in artificial, purely classical systems, so-called topological mechanical metamaterials. Since then, various topological phenomena could be demonstrated in such metamaterials, which led to new theoretical insights and new research directions in the field of topological condensed matter physics.
In this talk, I will give a short introduction to topological condensed matter physics, and I will explain how topological metamaterials work using some previously realized metamaterials as illustrative examples. I will then present our current setups to implement two new metamaterials: First, a system of more than 2000 microelectromechanical resonators arranged in a honeycomb lattice which we envision to use as simulation platform for various lattice models and, second, a phononic crystal with which we aim to realize a so-called delicate topological insulator.
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Recording
There will be a live stream, but there will be *no* recording.