Date of Award
2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Department
Mechanical Engineering
First Advisor
Jihong Ma
Abstract
NASA's mission to understand the universe is dependent on its capacity to observe and measure it. The capabilities of NASA's spacefaring observatories--which have been critical to NASA's success--are limited by onboard vibrations. Topological insulators and their ability to produce exotic flows of waves are a key contender in the development of next generation designs. The topological transitions that define these materials can force them to occupy an unconventional state near their boundary producing these anomalous transport properties. Further work in the field has led to the discovery that these topological transitions can occur at the edges of these boundary states producing a hierarchy of topological states within a material at the cost of reduced dimensions. In this paper we demonstrate that the placement of interfaces in a 1D Su-Schrieffer-Heeger supercell also plays a role in defining the topology of the entire material. This behavior is exploited to bypass the dimensional reduction previously required for hierarchical topological insulators, allowing for topological hierarchies to be replicated indefinitely, enlarging the design space for topological metamaterials.
Language
en
Number of Pages
48 p.
Recommended Citation
Pyfrom, Joel, "Hierarchies in Topological Materials" (2025). Graduate College Dissertations and Theses. 2037.
https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/graddis/2037
