Symmetry protected topological phases and generalized cohomology

A bstract We discuss the classification of SPT phases in condensed matter systems. We review Kitaev’s argument that SPT phases are classified by a generalized cohomology theory, valued in the spectrum of gapped physical systems [20, 23]. We propose a concrete description of that spectrum and of the corresponding cohomology theory. We compare our proposal to pre-existing constructions in the literature.