Discovery of Topological Materials

Observed Weyl fermions and Fermi arcs in TaAs. Red and blue points represent Weyl points with opposite chirality, which are connected by a Fermi arc.  
© Dr. Zhongkai Liu (Oxford)

Abstract

The concept of topology was introduced to physics to understand the unique behavior of materials, which was celebrated by the Nobel Prize in 2016. Over the past decade, the field of topological states has boosted frontline research in condensed matter physics. It is witnessed that the prediction and discovery of topological materials have stimulated the rapid development of this field. In this talk, I will first overview the general concepts of topological states. Chemistry insights are found to be rather helpful to discover topological materials and to realize beautiful concepts in physics, by employing the ab initio computation method. For example, the topological Weyl fermions were recently discovered in