Topological Phases: Understanding Kitaev's Paper

[shiraz]

Dear All
I am trying to understand the following paper for Kitaev :" Periodic table for topological insulators and superconductors", But i am founding it so hard. Can anyone help me to understand it?
Thank you.

 

[protonsarecool]

Can you be more specific? There are a lot of advanced mathematical concepts to be mastered before you can hope to understand this paper, esp. from algebraic topology, such as homotopy, homology, K-theory, ...

This paper is more extensive, and constructs the table more explicitly, with direct computations of Chern numbers, winding numbers etc... However, that won't help you if you don't know what a Chern number is. If you lack the mathematical background, I recommend Nakahara: Geometry, Topology and Physics.