The Kosterlitz-Thouless transition in two-dimensional Abelian spin systems and the Coulomb gas

Abstract

We rigorously establish the existence of a Kosterlitz-Thouless transition in the rotator, the Villain, the solid-on-solid, and the ℤ n models, forn large enough, and in the Coulomb lattice gas, in two dimensions. Our proof is based on an inductive expansion of the Coulomb gas in the sine-Gordon representation, extending over all possible distance scales, which expresses that gas as a convex superposition of dilute gases of neutral molecules whose activities are small if β is sufficiently large. Such gases are known not to exhibit screening. Abelian spin systems are related to a Coulomb gas by means of a duality transformation.