Physics (Internal)

Topological magnon bands and effective Hamiltonians for periodically driven systems

This event is part of the Condensed Matter Theory Seminar Series.

The effect of spin-orbit coupling in condensed matter systems has received intense study over the past decade, most notably in the context of topological band insulators where electron-electron interactions are not essential for the topological properties. In this talk, I will focus on the opposite limit of strong electronic correlations with spin-orbit coupling. I will describe two different (materials motivated) two-dimensional models in which the spin-orbit coupling leads to topological band structure in the magnetic excitations. In the second part of the talk, I will turn to recent work describing an approach to achieving effective time-independent Hamiltonians for periodically driven, interacting many-particle systems. The method agrees with the Magnus expansion in the high frequency limit, but appears to also work well in the strong-driving, low-frequency limit.