The source materials for the EdX course "Topology in Condensed Matter: Tying Quantum Knots"

The latest stable version of the course is located at http://topocondmat.org.

Open these notebooks in Binder: so you can experiment with the code.

Development tip: shallow clone

Initially, this repository contained the output of all computations, which means that its size is quite large (~300MB). To avoid downloading all the data, you can use the shallow cloning feature of git by using these or analogous commands:

mkdir topocm && cd topocm
git init
git remote add origin https://github.com/topocm/topocm_content.git # (Or the location of your fork)
git fetch --depth 1 origin +refs/tags/cleaned # Here we get the first commit that doesn't contain cruft
git fetch origin
git checkout master

The cleaned tag marks the start of development that stores no output. This gives you a repository without cruft data and a size of ~15MB.

Topocondmat.org

The files in this repo are executed and converted to HTML and available on topocondmat.org. For building the website, we use the Jupyter Book static site generator, available under the BSD license.

Building the website

Run pixi run postprocess-html to execute notebooks and export _build/html. The task invokes MyST directly because Jupyter Book 2.1.7 does not apply its --execute-parallel option. Set JUPYTER_NUM_PROCS to change the default of four concurrent notebooks. MyST caches notebook execution; changes to the environment or course helpers invalidate that cache. BASE_URL=/branch_name builds a branch preview, including assets and legacy redirects.

The course retains its youtube, multiple-choice, and checkboxes directives. Quizzes use MyST widgets because the former fabricated notebook outputs are incompatible with MyST 1.11. Plot widgets use Plotly.js 4 and MathJax 4 rather than the stable theme's bundled Plotly 2 renderer. Standalone notebook LaTeX uses the same shared MathJax 4 instance through a MyST widget, avoiding the theme's competing MathJax 2 loader. Downloadable notebooks retain their original output data.

Run infrastructure tests with pixi run python -m unittest discover -s tests and pixi run node --test tests/*.test.mjs. After changing rendering code, also check plots, sliders, quizzes, videos, and legacy URLs in a browser, including under a branch prefix.

Merge requests publish an artifact preview through the environment's View app link, available for one week. BASE_URL includes the job's artifact path. The preview-only scripts/artifact_preview.py keeps explicit index.html URLs because the artifact viewer does not serve directory indexes. It patches the pinned theme's URL helper and fails if that helper changes on a theme upgrade. Production uses MyST's normal directory URLs.

The main-branch job publishes to the OVH VPS as the restricted topocondmat account, using the existing WEBSITE_UPLOAD_KEY and the SSH host key pinned in .ci/known_hosts. The account's rsync root is /srv/www/topocondmat.