Sumathi Rao
Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad
Sumathi Rao received her PhD from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1983 in particle physics. She joined the Institute of Physics in Bhubaneswar in 1987, after postdoctoral jobs at Fermi Lab and at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. She is currently a Professor at the Harish-Chandra Research Institute in Allahabad, where she and her students work in the area of condensed matter systems. She was elected Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India, in 2001 and Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 2017.
Session 1B: Inaugural Lectures by Fellows/Associates
Topological phases of quantum matter View Presentation / View Video
A brief introduction to the basic ideas of topological materials, from the quantum Hall effect to its generalization to the quantum spin Hall effect and time-reversal invariant topological insulators will be given. Then the relevance of Dirac materials in condensed matter systems, including novel materials such asWeyl semi-metals will be discussed. At a theoretical level, topological field theories form the basic framework to study many of these new phases. After a brief mention of some of her early work in topological field theories, the speaker will describe her more recent work in the field of topological quantum matter.