Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Mcclarty, P A
• Krüger, F
• Guidi, T
• Parker, S F
• Refson, K
• Parker, A W
• Prabhakaran, D
• Coldea, R

Titel

Topological triplon modes and bound states in a Shastry-Sutherland magnet

Ist Teil von

• Nature physics, 2017-08, Vol.13 (8), p.736

Ort / Verlag

London: Nature Publishing Group

Erscheinungsjahr

2017

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The twin discoveries of the quantum Hall effect, in the 1980s, and of topological band insulators, in the 2000s, were landmarks in physics that enriched our view of the electronic properties of solids. In a nutshell, these discoveries have taught us that quantum mechanical wavefunctions in crystalline solids may carry nontrivial topological invariants which have ramifications for the observable physics. One of the side effects of the recent topological insulator revolution has been that such physics is much more widespread than was appreciated ten years ago. For example, while topological insulators were originally studied in the context of electron wavefunctions, recent work has initiated a hunt for topological insulators in bosonic systems: in photonic crystals, in the vibrational modes of crystals, and in the excitations of ordered magnets. Using inelastic neutron scattering along with theoretical calculations, we demonstrate that, in a weak magnetic field, the dimerized quantum magnet SrCu2 (BO3 )2 is a bosonic topological insulator with topologically protected chiral edge modes of triplon excitations.