Kevin Lee edited Topological_Insulator_has_drawn_a__.tex  over 8 years ago

Commit id: 392a494f5d223587274fd6b5022b2fa53dbc2fed

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Topological Insulator has drawn a lot of attention recently in condensed matter physics. It describes the phase of matter in a different way, and gives us a new perspective toward materials. What is Topological Insulator(TI)? It is a material with bulk bandgap. However, at the surface of TI, it has edge states that propagate like a metal. We can imagine this like plastic tube wrapped with a aluminum foil around the tube. And it is proposed that it might be a potential candidate as fault tolerant quantum computation because the edge states are protected by time reversal symmetry. Protected state means that it is robust against impurity or imperfections in the crystal. The first 3D TI was observed in semiconducting alloy $Bi_{1-x}Sb_x$ \cite{Hsieh_2008}.