Physics Colloquium with Binghai Yan on Topological Quantum Materials

Topological quantum materials, for example, topological insulators (TIs) and Weyl semimetals (WSMs), have reshaped our understanding in physics and materials in last decades.  The topology originates in the bulk and leads to usual surface states. I will overview basic concepts of topological states of matter and introduce latest progress including the nonlinear transport due to quantum geometry. 

Binghai Yan is an associate professor in the department of condensed matter physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. He is a theoretical physicist and currently interested in topological materials and topology-induced phenomena in transport and optics.  After completing his PhD at Tsinghua University in 2008, he worked as a postdoc at Bremen University and later at Stanford University. He was a group leader in the Max Planck Institute in Dresden during 2012-2016 and started his current position at Weizmann Institute in 2017. He was awarded the ARCHES Prize in Germany in 2013, the Israel Physical Society Prize for Young Scientist in 2017 and recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher every year since 2019. He is currently visiting Penn State University for sabbatical.