Appears in collection : Spectral days / Journées méthodes spectrales

According to a widely accepted terminology, a topological insulator is a (independent) Fermion system which has surface modes that are not exposed to Anderson localization. This stability results from topological constraints given by non-trivial invariants like non-commutative Chern numbers and higher winding numbers, but sometimes also more subtle Z2 invariants associated to adequate Fredholm operators with symmetries. Prime examples are quantum Hall systems, but the talk also considers chiral and BdG systems as well as time-reversal symmetric systems with Z2 invariants.