Black hole mirages

Topological states of matter are usually define via topological invariants formulated as momentum space integrals. This requires the presence of a Brillouin zone to begin with, and thus translationally invariant materials. An important research frontier is the analysis of systems that are not translationally invariant, but still intimately connected to topology.

As one example in that class, I will discuss Weyl semimetals with spatially inhomogeneous nodal tilts. Those can in principle be engineered by inhomogeneous strain patterns. These systems exhibit intriguing analogies to spacetimes with black holes. On the one hand, these analogies allow for a physically transparent description of transport properties, which in turn paves the way towards applications such as electron lenses. On the other hand, the fact that solids are not the universe implies that the analogies do not hold in all regimes. If we look hard enough, analogue black holes fade away like a mirage, ultimately revealing physics „beyond“ gravity analogies.

Background

Tobias is currently an Emmy Noether Junior Research Group Leader at the TU Dresden where he is investigating topological states of matter.
For his recent work and contribution to the field, Tobias has been awarded with the prestigious Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize 2022.
https://tu-dresden.de/mn/physik/itp/tfp/die-professur/beschaeftigte/quantum-design/quantum_design