Workshop: Topological Matter, Strings, K-theory and related areas

In the past decade, there has been huge surge of interest in topological aspects of condensed matter physics. More recently, it has started to transpire that the mathematics underlying this field has much in common with that used in and stimulated by string theory.

This interdisciplinary confluence of ideas provides a rich source of new research directions, in both pure mathematics, as well as their rigorous applications to string theory and topological matter in physics. The idea that materials can exhibit "topological properties", which are robustly protected by some fundamental physical principles such as dynamical symmetries, has become extremely influential in modern condensed matter physics. Such exotic materials have excellent technological promise, and some of the theoretically predictions have already been found experimentally. The topological properties appear to be strongly governed by the same deep mathematics which had previously found application in high energy physics and string theory, for example, in the study of D-branes. A week after the workshop ended, the 2016 Nobel Prize for Physics was announced, and given to the scientists David J. Thouless, J. Michael Kosterlitz, Duncan Haldane, in the area of the workshop, "for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter".

• JGP special issue on String geometries, Dualities and Topological Matter