Zwerger, Wilhelm

Date:  Tuesday, November 29, 2016
Time: 12:45
Place: ETH Zurich, Hönggerberg, HPV G 5
Host:  Gianni Blatter / Klaus Ensslin

Topology in Physics: an Introduction to this Year’s Nobel Prize

Wilhelm Zwerger
TU München & ETH Zurich

Topology is a branch of mathematics which deals with properties of manifolds that remain invariant under smooth deformations. Within the past ten years, concepts from topology have become increasingly important in physics. The basis for this development goes back to the work of Kosterlitz, Thouless and Haldane. The talk will provide an introduction to two of the main concepts introduced in this context: phase transitions without an order parameter and the quantization of the Hall conductance as a topological invariant.