# Frontiers of Physics

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ISSN 2095-0462 (Print)
ISSN 2095-0470 (Online)
CN 11-5994/O4
Postal Subscription Code 80-965
2019 Impact Factor: 2.502
 Recent Advances in Topological Materials (Eds. Yugui Yao, Xiangang Wan, Shengyuan A. Yang, Hua Chen) Starting from the discovery of topological insulators in 2004, the field of topological materials has emerged as the frontier of the current research. It has greatly deepened our fundamental understanding of the band theory of materials. A variety of topological phases of matter have been predicted, and a number of such materials along with exotic physical properties have been discovered in experiment. The field has attracted wide interest because it also has an intrinsic interdisciplinary nature, not only limited to condensed matter physics, but also connected to high-energy physics, astrophysics, chemistry, materials science, and intimately related to application fields such as device and electronic engineering. It holds huge promise as building blocks for the next-generation electronics industry, based on the concept of “topological electronics”.   In view of these developments, we, together with the editorial office of the journal “Frontiers of Physics”, have decided that it is timely to edit a special issue dedicated to the topic of “Recent Advances in Topological Materials”. The scope of this focus issue in Frontiers of Physics would cover all of the aspects from theoretical, computational, to experimental progress in the field. This special issue will present the major recent progress in this field from the best teams all over the world. We do hope that the issue will form a broad overview of the current state of this cutting-edge field.   Specific topics of interest covered in this issue include  ●  Weyl and Dirac semimetals  ●  Novel topological semimetals beyond Weyl and Dirac  ●  Spintronics with topological materials  ●  Progress on 2D topological insulators  ●  Dirac superconductor  ●  Majorana fermions and topological superconductivity  ●  Transport in topological materials  ●  Magnetism and topological materials  ●  High order topological insulators  ●  Anomalous Hall and magneto-optic effect in topological materials  ●  Topological states in cold atom systems   We are looking for high profile scientists from China and overseas to contribute Review, Mini-Review, Perspective, or Research Article in the foresaid areas. Please feel free to choose a striking topic that best fits the issue. Co-authorship is welcome. There is no strict length limit for each article, and for each review at least 15 pages length is highly expected.   The tentative published date of the special issue is the end of 2018, so we expect that the review articles will be submitted by October 30, 2018. The sample article (TEX template) can be downloaded via http://journal.hep.com.cn/fop/EN/column/column15258.shtml and the new manuscript can be submitted online through http://cn.manuscriptcentral.com/fop. All PDFs of the special issue will be openly accessed at http://journal.hep.com.cn/fop, and a copy of the volume will be mailed to all participants.   Sincerely,   Guest Editors Yugui Yao, Beijing Institute of Technology, ygyao@bit.edu.cn Xiangang Wan, Nanjing University, xgwan@nju.edu.cn Shengyuan A. Yang, Singapore University of Technology and Design, shengyuan_yang@sutd.edu.sg Hua Chen, Colorado State University, huachen@colostate.edu Detail>>
 Select Equivariant PT-symmetric real Chern insulators Y. X. Zhao Front. Phys. .  2020, 15 (1): 13603.   https://doi.org/10.1007/s11467-019-0943-y Abstract   PDF (737KB) It was understood that Chern insulators cannot be realized in the presence of PT symmetry. In this paper, we reveal a new class of PT-symmetric Chern insulators, which has internal degrees of freedom forming real representations of a symmetry group with a complex endomorphism field. As a generalization to the conventional 2n-dimensional Chern insulators with integer n≥1, these PT-symmetric Chern insulators have the n-th complex Chern number as their topological invariant, and have a $Z$classification given by the equivariant orthogonal K theory. Thus, in a fairly different sense, there exist ubiquitously Chern insulators with PT symmetry. By generalizing the Thouless charge pump argument, we find that, for a PT-symmetric Chern insulator with Chern number $υ$, there are equally many $υ$ flavors of coexisting left- and right-handed chiral modes. Chiral modes with opposite chirality are complex conjugates to each other as complex representations of the internal symmetry group, but are not isomorphic. For the physical dimensionality d = 2, the PT-symmetric Chern insulators may be realized in artificial systems including photonic crystals and periodic mechanical systems. Cited: Crossref(4) WebOfScience(4)