EPJ B - Geometry matters

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Published on 24 February 2011

A colloquium published in EPJ B provides a thorough formulation of the theory of the insulating state by means of geometrical concepts, which were somewhat hidden and implicit in the original literature.

In 1964 Kohn published the milestone paper "Theory of the insulating state", according to which insulators and metals differ in their ground state, the key difference being the organization of their electrons. However, the theory of the insulating state remained somewhat incomplete until the late 1990s. The modern theory of the insulating state encompasses all kinds of known insulators, including band insulators, Mott insulators, Anderson insulators, quantum Hall insulators, Chern and topological insulators.