Actinide Topological Insulator Materials with Strong Interaction

Interacting Topological Insulator Topological insulators (TIs) hold great promise as a setting for exotic fundamental phenomena, as well as for more practical applications such as quantum computing. This new state of matter has been discovered in materials such as Bi 2 Se 3 , where electrons' spins are correlated with their orbital motion, but interactions between the electrons themselves are negligible. For a TI to fulfill its potential, a material with interacting electrons is desirable. Zhang et al. (p. 1464 ) used density functional calculations to predict that strong interactions in actinide compounds such as AmN may drive a transition into a TI state, with a large insulating gap favorable for device applications.