Functional compartmentalization of eukaryotic genomes is thought to be necessary for the proper regulation of gene expression. Chromatin insulators or boundary elements have been implicated in the establishment of this compartmentalization, as they may be involved in creating independent chromatin domains. Recent advances in understanding the mechanisms of insulator function suggest a role for ...

We propose a characterization of zero-temperature phases in disordered superconductors on the basis of the nature of quasiparticle transport. In three-dimensional systems, there are two distinct phases in close analogy to the distinction between normal metals and insulators: the superconducting ‘‘metal’’ with delocalized quasiparticle excitations and the superconducting ‘‘insulator’’ with local...

9.4.1. Hall effect † Consider electrons moving in a 2D plane (the system is known as a 2D electron gas or 2DEG). If we apply an in-plane electric field E, we will get some electric current j. Typically, E  J . Let’s assume they are in the x direction Ex and jx. The resistivity is rxx = Ex  jx † Apply a B field perpendicular to the 2D plane. Lorentz force leads to charge accumulation for the ...

The identity of charges generated by contact electrification on dielectrics has remained unknown for centuries and the precise determination of the charge density is also a long-standing challenge. Here, electrostatic charges on Teflon (polytetrafluoroethylene) produced by rubbing with Lucite (polymethylmethacrylate) were directly identified as electrons rather than ions by electrochemical (red...

We extend the Berry-phase concept of polarization to insulators having a nonzero value of the Chern invariant. The generalization to such Chern insulators requires special care because of the partial occupation of chiral edge states. We show how the integrated bulk current arising from an adiabatic evolution can be related to a difference of bulk polarizations. We also show how the surface char...

Symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases are bulk-gapped quantum phases with symmetries, which have gapless or degenerate boundary states as long as the symmetries are not broken. The SPT phases in free fermion systems, such as topological insulators, can be classified; however, it is not known what SPT phases exist in general interacting systems. We present a systematic way to construct SPT...

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We predict a large thermoelectric figure-of-merit in Kondo insulator nanowires at low temperatures. The high ZT values are due to the Kondo effect for electrons and boundary scattering on phonons. We simulated the electron properties of the bulk Kondo insulators within the framework of dynamical mean field theory and found that electrons have short mean free path. In nanowire structures, electr...

Odd index pairings of K1-group elements with Fredholm modules are of relevance in index theory, differential geometry and applications such as to topological insulators. For the concrete setting of operators on a Hilbert space over a lattice, it is shown how to calculate the resulting index as the signature of a suitably constructed finitedimensional matrix, more precisely the finite volume res...