Journal of Statistical Mechanics Theory and Experiment
The relevancy of the chiral boson to the Berezinskii–Kosterlitz–Thouless transition as a boundary effect
Hitoshi Inoue
Abstract
The sine–Gordon model describes topological phase transitions in 1 + 1 systems, referred to as Berezinskii–Kosterlitz–Thouless transitions (BKTT), such as the superfluid–normal fluid, plasma–dielectric and roughening transitions. Analysing the sine–Gordon model in detail using boundary conformal field theory, we develop a new method for treating the BKTT under open boundary conditions (OBC). In particular we find that the chiral parts of the vertex operators are useful for considering the BKTT under OBC.