Date Apr 4, 2023, 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm Location Jadwin Hall - Joseph Henry Rm Audience Physics faculty, post docs, grads Share on X Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn Speaker Meng Cheng Affiliation Yale University Details Event Description It is by now well-understood that gapped ground states of local Hamiltonians can be classified topologically, and the nontrivial states exhibit a variety of interesting topological phenomena. In this talk I’ll discuss how the topological classification can be generalized to disordered ensembles and mixed states. I’ll focus on short-range-entangled ensembles with global symmetries, with an important distinction between exact and average symmetries, the latter of which are only preserved by the ensemble as a whole but not on individual states. I’ll present a general framework based on domain wall decorations to classify topological phases in such ensembles, and discuss examples of “intrinsically disordered” average-symmetry-protected topological phases, which can not be realized in clean systems.