Topological Character of Excitations in Strongly Correlated Electronic Systems: Confinement and Dimensional Crossover

Abstract

Topologically nontrivial states are common in symmetry broken phases at macroscopic scales. Low dimensional systems bring them to a microscopic level where solitons emerge as single particles. The earliest and latest applications are conducting polymers and spin-Peierls chains. After a history introduction, we shall discuss the topological aspects of elementary excitations, especially the confinement and the dimensional D crossover. At the 1D level we exploit results of different exact and approximate techniques in theory of solitons, for both quantum and semiclassical models, and the related knowledge on anomalous charges and currents. At higher D the topological requirements for the combined symmetry originate the spin- or charge- roton like excitations with charge- or spin- kinks localized in the core. In quasi 1D world they can be viewed as resulting from a spin-charge recombination due to the 3D confinement.