A Response Theory of Topological Insulators

Download or read book A Response Theory of Topological Insulators written by Wing Fung Leung and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A time-reversal invariant topological insulator is defined by its topological magnetoelectric response that is robust against disorder. The response formula, defined on a Brillouin torus, defines a $mathbb{Z}_2$ invariant and classifies the topological phase. However, in the presence of disorder or the magnetic field, the notion of Brillouin torus is destroyed and the response formula is no longer well-defined. This has been a challenging open problem, and it is essental in defining a topological insulator. This thesis proposes a topological response theory that is free from this fundamental deficiency. We derived the magnetoelectric response formula in position space for a generic three dimensional model under disorder and finite magnetic field. For time-reversal invariant systems, we connected the result to the 2nd Chern number in Noncommutative Geometry. We developed the noncommutative theory of Chern numbers and showed that the quantization of the magnetoelectric response is robust against disorder. Numerical studies on serveral disodered topological models in 1D and 3D are presented.