The PIMS Postdoctoral Fellow Seminar: Xiaowen Zhu

Topological insulators are materials that exhibit unique physical properties due to their non-trivial topological order. One of the most notable consequences of this order is the presence of protected edge states as well as closure of bulk spectral gaps, which is known as the bulk-edge correspondence.

In this talk, I will discuss the mathematical description of topological insulators and their related spectral properties. The presentation will begin with an overview of Floquet theory, Bloch bundles, and the Chern number. We will then examine the bulk-edge correspondence in topological insulators before delving into our research on closure of bulk spectral gaps for topological insulators with general edges. This talk is based on a joint work with Alexis Drouot.

Speaker biography: Xiaowen Zhu obtained her Ph.D. at the University of California, Irvine, where she studied spectral theory of random and quasiperiodic Schrödinger operators under the supervision of Svetlana Jitomirskaya. She is currently a PIMS Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Washington. She is working with Alexis Drouot to explore mathematical theories of topological insulators.

This event is part of the Emergent Research: The PIMS Postdoctoral Fellow Colloquium Series.