By treating Earth as a topological insulator — a state of quantum matter — physicists found a powerful explanation for the movements of the planet’s air and seas.
While the phenomenon, namely bulk-boundary correspondence, is inspired by topological insulators, the fundamental physics here is rather classical, not quantum. It appears quantamagazine has since updated the title (physics -> physicists), but not the url.
What’s interesting here is they were able to verify the bulk topological characters (winding number around the zero of the wave function, ie the vortex) via observational data. In physics it’s usually the other way around: the edge phenomenon, that is the edge spectral flow, is easier to measure than the elusive phase winding of the bulk wave function.
Incidentally, the original theory paper from Delplace et al came out right after the physics Nobel prize was awarded to topological physics.
While the phenomenon, namely bulk-boundary correspondence, is inspired by topological insulators, the fundamental physics here is rather classical, not quantum. It appears quantamagazine has since updated the title (physics -> physicists), but not the url.
What’s interesting here is they were able to verify the bulk topological characters (winding number around the zero of the wave function, ie the vortex) via observational data. In physics it’s usually the other way around: the edge phenomenon, that is the edge spectral flow, is easier to measure than the elusive phase winding of the bulk wave function.
Incidentally, the original theory paper from Delplace et al came out right after the physics Nobel prize was awarded to topological physics.