Topological Aspects of Condensed Matter Physics : Lecture Notes of the Les Houches Summer School : Session CIII

Topological condensed matter physics is a recent arrival among the disciplines of modern physics of a distinctive and substantive nature. Its roots reach far back, but much of its current importance derives from exciting developments in the last half-century. The field is advancing rapidly, growing explosively, and diversifying greatly. There is now a zoo of topological phenomena–the quantum spin Hall effect, topological insulators, Coulomb spin liquids, non-Abelian anyonic statistics and their potential application in topological quantum computing, to name but a few–as well as an increasingly sophisticated set of concepts and methods underpinning their understanding. The aim of this Les Houches Summer School was to present an overview of this field, along with a sense of its origins and its place on the map of advances in fundamental physics. The school comprised a set of basic lectures (Part I) aimed at a pedagogical introduction to the fundamental concepts, which was accompanied by more advanced lectures (Part II) covering individual topics at the forefront of today’s research in condensed matter physics.