Quantization of topological indices in critical chains at low temperatures

Abstract

Various types of topological phenomena at criticality are currently under active research. In this paper we suggest to generalize the known topological quantities to finite temperatures, allowing us to consider gapped and critical (gapless) systems on the same footing. It is then discussed that the quantization of the topological indices, also at critically, is retrieved by taking the low-temperature limit. This idea is explicitly illustrated on a simple case study of chiral critical chains where the quantization is shown analytically and verified numerically. The formalism is also applied for studying robustness of the topological indices to various types of disordering perturbations.