Universality of the topological phase transition in the interacting Haldane model

The Haldane model is a standard tight-binding model describing electrons hopping on a hexagonal lattice subject to a transverse, dipolar magnetic field. We consider its interacting version for values of the interaction strength that are small compared to the bandwidth. We study the critical case at the transition between the trivial and "topological" insulating phases, and we rigorously establish that the transverse conductivity on the dressed critical line is quantized at a half-integer multiple of e2/h: this is the average of the integer values of the Hall conductivity in the insulating phases on either side of the dressed critical line. Together with previous results, this fully characterizes the nature of the phase transition between different Hall plateaus and proves its universality with respect to many-body interactions. The proof is based on a combination of constructive renormalization group methods and exact lattice Ward identities.