摘要

Topological materials are solids with nontrivial topology in their electronic band structures. The periodical lattice of atoms in solids limits the electrons in a compact reciprocal lattice space and leads to nontrivial band topology in both insulators and metals, namely topological insulators and topological semimetals. Band inversion is an intuitive picture for understanding the underlying physics since it is related with Berry phase and Berry curvature of bands. How to find a material with nontrivial band topology had been a quite elusive and difficult task. However, some exotic and abnormal physical phenomena related with nontrivial band topology have been noticed and successfully applied for locating the exact topological materials, which includes a large band gap two-dimensional TIs in ZrTe5, the first Dirac semimetal Na3Bi and the first Weyl semimetal TaAs. These discoveries have greatly advanced the whole field of topological quantum states. Recently, the band inversion have been found to be efficiently identified with symmetry indicators formed by irreducible representation of bands at high symmetrical momenta, which can be obtained from first-principles band structure calculations. High-throughput calculation of known non-magnetic materials is thus performed and thousands compounds have been identified to have nontrivial band topology, which have been stored in a database for routinely search.

报告人简介

翁红明，男，中国科学院物理研究所研究员。2000～2005年在南京大学物理学系就读，获博士学位；2005～2010年在日本留学、访问。2010年回国到中国科学院物理研究所凝聚态理论与材料计算实验室工作，先后任副研究员、研究员、实验室副主任等。2014年获国家自然科学基金委优秀青年科学基金资助，2017年获日本仁科纪念财团“仁科芳雄亚洲奖”和中国科学院青年科学家奖，2018年入选“全球高被引科学家”，获中科院杰出科技成就奖（集体奖）等。迄今发表SCI论文140余篇，被引用12000余次。主要从事计算凝聚态物理研究，通过发展特色计算方法和探索拓扑材料规律，理论预言并成功发现了多种拓扑电子材料，其中“理论预言并发现外尔半金属”的工作被英国物理学会《物理世界》评为2015年度十大突破，被美国物理学会《物理》评为2015年八大亮点工作，入选科技部“2015年中国科学十大进展”等。2018年该工作入选美国物理学会《物理评论》系列期刊创刊125周年纪念文集。2017年“发现三重简并费米子”的工作入选当年中国科学十大进展等。