We consider a model of electrons in a finite topological insulator. We numerically
study the propagation of electronic wave-packets localized near edges of the structure
in the presence of defects and random disorder. We compare the propagation with
computations of the
spectral localizer index: a spatially local topological index. We
find that without disorder, wave-packets propagate along boundaries between regions
of differing spectral localizer index with minimal loss, even in the presence of strong
defects. With disorder, wave-packets still propagate along boundaries between regions
of differing localizer index, but lose significant mass as they propagate. We also find
that with disorder, the
localizer gap, a measure of the localizer index “strength”, is
generally smaller away from the boundary than without disorder. Based on
this result, we conjecture that wave-packets propagating along boundaries
between regions of differing spectral localizer index do not lose significant
mass whenever the localizer gap is sufficiently large on both sides of the
boundary.
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