Domain Wall Fermions and Chiral Gauge theories: Topological Insulators in Particle Physic
CMSA EVENTS: CMSA QUANTUM MATTER IN MATH & PHYSICS SEMINAR
Ideas from the early 1990s for regulating chiral fermions in lattice gauge theory led to a number of developments which paralleled roughly concurrent and independent discoveries in condensed matter physics. I show how the Integer Quantum Hall Effect, Chern Insulators, Topological Insulators, and Majorana edge states all play a role in lattice gauge theories, and how one can also find relativistic versions of the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect, the Quantum Spin Hall Effect and related exotic forms of matter. How to construct a nonperturbative regulator for chiral gauge theories (like the Standard Model!) remains an open challenge, however, one that may require new insights from condensed matter physics into exotic states of matter.