Graduate Students' Choice: Topological order and topological excitation (video)

Xiao-Gang Wen, Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics, MIT


Topological order is a new kind to quantum matter at zero temperature, whose existence is due to strong quantum entanglement. The state of matter with topological order can have many novel properties, including fractionalized excitations, which can carry fractionalized angular momentum and even fractionalized degrees of freedom.

In this talk, I will explain those concepts via some simple examples.