CMTC Seminar

Date
Wed, Mar 28, 2018 11:00 am - 12:15 pm
Location
2205 John S. Toll Physics Building

Description

Speaker: Liang Fu (MIT)

Title: Topology of finite-lifetime quasipartices and non-Hermitian quantum mechanics

Abstract: Quasiparticles in many-body systems generally have a finite lifetime due to electron-electron, electron-phonon and electron-impurity scatterings. I will show that in small-gap systems, the decay of a quasiparticle can alter its energy-momentum dispersion significantly, for example, transform a two-dimensional Dirac point into a  nodal arc that ends at topological exceptional points. Properties of finite-lifetime quasiparticles are naturally described by non-Hermitian Hamiltonians that include imaginary part of self energy.

Host: Brian Swingle and Tom Iadecola

http://www.physics.umd.edu/cmtc/seminars.html