Choreographed entanglement dances: Topological states of quantum matter

It has long been thought that all different phases of matter arise from symmetry breaking. Without symmetry breaking, there would be no pattern, and matter would be featureless. However, it is now clear that for quantum matter at zero temperature, even symmetric disordered liquids can have features,...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Wen, Xiao-Gang
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Format: Article
Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2020
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/124007
Description
Summary:It has long been thought that all different phases of matter arise from symmetry breaking. Without symmetry breaking, there would be no pattern, and matter would be featureless. However, it is now clear that for quantum matter at zero temperature, even symmetric disordered liquids can have features, giving rise to topological phases of quantum matter. Some of the topological phases are highly entangled (that is, have topological order), whereas others are weakly entangled (that is, have symmetry-protected trivial order). This Review provides a brief summary of these zero-temperature states of matter and their emergent properties, as well as their importance in unifying some of the most basic concepts in nature.