At low temperature, the large distance properties of the O(2) spin lattice model can be described by the O(2) non-linear σ-model. The latter model is free and massless in two dimensions. The origin of this peculiarity can be found in the local structure of the field manifold: for N = 2, the O(N) sphere reduces to a circle, which cannot be distinguished locally from a straight line. Because the physical fields are sin θ or cos θ, or equivalently e± iθ, instead of θ, a field renormalization is necessary, and temperature-dependent anomalous dimensions are generated. However, the free θ action cannot describe the long-distance properties of the lattice model for all temperatures, since a high temperature analysis of the corresponding spin model shows that the correlation length is finite at high temperature, and thus a phase transition is required. In fact, it is necessary to take into account the property that θ is a cyclic variable. This condition is irrelevant at low temperature, but when the temperature increases, classical configurations with singularities at isolated points, around which θ varies by a multiple of 2π become important. The action of these configurations (vortices) can be identified with the energy of a neutral Coulomb gas, which exhibits a transition between a low temperature of bound neutral molecules and a high temperature phase of a plasma of free charges. The Coulomb gas can be mapped onto the sine-Gordon (sG) model, mapping in which the low- and high-temperature regions of the models are exchanged. This correspondence helps to understand some properties of the famous Kosterlitz-Thouless (KT) phase transition, which separates an infinite correlation length phase without order, the low-temperature phase of the O(2) spin model, from a finite correlation length phase, the high-temperature phase of the O(2) spin model.
The order/disorder phase transition of hypophosphorous acid H3PO2