Ubiquity of conical points in topological insulators

Abstract

We show that generically, the degeneracies of a family of Hermitian matrices depending on three parameters have a conical structure. Our result applies to the study of topological phases of matter. It implies that adiabatic deformations of two-dimensional topological insulators come generically with Dirac-like propagating currents, whose total conductivity equals the chiral number of conical points.