English

Edge States: Topological Insulators, Superconductors and QCD Chiral Bags

Materials Science 2015-06-17 v3 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

The dynamics of the magnetic field in a superconducting phase is described by an effective massive bosonic field theory. If the superconductor is confined in a domain M with boundary \partial M, the boundary conditions of the electromagnetic fields are predetermined by physics. They are time-reversal and also parity invariant for adapted geometry. They lead to edge excitations while in comparison, the bulk energies have a large gap. A similar phenomenon occurs for topological insulators where appropriate boundary conditions for the Dirac Hamiltonian also lead to similar edge states and an 'incompressible bulk'. They give spin-momentum locking as well. In addition time-reversal and parity invariance emerge for adapted geometry. Similar edge states appear in QCD bag models with chiral boundary conditions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1308.5635,
  title  = {Edge States: Topological Insulators, Superconductors and QCD Chiral Bags},
  author = {M. Asorey and A. P. Balachandran and J. M. Perez-Pardo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1308.5635},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

29 pages, 7 figures