One of the cornerstones of condensed matter physics, the description of wave functions on periodic lattices in terms of energy bands of Bloch states, serves as the unifying thread in this thesis. This description is often referred to as band theory. …
We analyze triply degenerate nodal points [or triple points (TPs) for short] in energy bands of crystalline solids. Specifically, we focus on spinless band structures, i.e., when spin-orbit coupling is negligible, and consider TPs formed along …
Triple nodal points are degeneracies of energy bands in momentum space at which three Hamiltonian eigenstates coalesce at a single eigenenergy. For spinless particles, the stability of a triple nodal point requires two ingredients: rotation symmetry …
Pontrjagin's seminal topological classification of two-band Hamiltonians in three momentum dimensions is hereby enriched with the inclusion of a crystallographic rotational symmetry. The enrichment is attributed to a new topological invariant which …
Topological band theory studies the behavior of non-interacting electrons in solids that is protected by topological invariants and is therefore robust against system perturbations. Among many topics that are important for characterizing topological …
We introduce the exceptional topological insulator (ETI), a non-Hermitian topological state of matter that features exotic non-Hermitian surface states which can only exist within the three-dimensional topological bulk embedding. We show how this …
After the experimental discovery of topological insulators, the notion of what actually constitutes a topological band insulator has been refined in many ways. In their recent work, Aleksandra Nelson, Titus Neupert, Tomáš Bzdušek and Aris Alexandradinata extend the paradigm of topological insulators to areas which were previously thought to contain only trivial insulators.
Being Wannierizable is not the end of the story for topological insulators. We introduce a family of topological insulators that would be considered trivial in the paradigm set by the tenfold way, topological quantum chemistry, and the method of …
Electron band structures, which describe the energy-momentum relation for electrons in solids, can exhibit robust crossings called "nodes". Such nodes famously occur in graphene or in Weyl semimetals, and often facilitate special transport phenomena, such as the decrease of resistivity of Weyl semimetals in applied parallel magnetic field.
We study a class of topological materials which in their momentum-space band structure exhibit threefold degeneracies known as triple points. Focusing specifically on $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric crystalline solids with negligible spin-orbit coupling, we …