Quasi-adiabatic continuation and the Topology of Many-body Quantum Systems

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Matthew Hastings, Microsoft Research
Jadwin Hall 343

Topological arguments play a key role in understanding quantum systems. For example, recently it has been shown that K-theory provides a tool for classifying different phases of non-interacting, or single-particle, systems. However, topological arguments have also been applied to interacting systems. I will explain the technique of quasi-adiabatic continuation, which provides a way to rigourously formulate many of the topological arguments made by physicists for these systems. In particular, I will discuss its application to a higher dimensional Lieb-Schultz-Mattis theorem (a statement about degeneracy of ground states, which can arise for topological reasons), where this technique was introduced in 2004, and its more recent application to proving quantum Hall conductance quantization for interacting systems.