Real experimental systems, however, are far from the idealized picture presented above in which spin-up and spin-down electrons are not coupled. A very important achievement was the realization that the quantum spin Hall state remains to be non-trivial even after the introduction of spin-up spin-down scattering, which destroys the quantum spin Hall effect. In a separate paper, Kane and Mele introduced a topological Z 2 invariant which characterizes a state as trivial or non-trivial band insulator (regardless if the state exhibits or does not exhibit a quantum spin Hall effect). Further stability studies of the edge liquid through which conduction takes place in the quantum spin Hall state proved, both analytically and numerically that the non-trivial state is robust to both interactions and extra spin-orbit coupling terms that mix spin-up and spin-down electrons. Such a non-trivial state (exhibiting or not exhibiting a quantum spin Hall effect) is called a topological insulator, which is an example of symmetry-protected topological order protected by charge conservation symmetry and time reversal symmetry. (Note that the quantum spin Hall state is also a symmetry-protected topological state protected by charge conservation symmetry and spin- S z conservation symmetry. We do not need time reversal symmetry to protect quantum spin Hall state. Topological insulator and quantum spin Hall state are different symmetry-protected topological states. So topological insulator and quantum spin Hall state are different states of matter.)