Effective action and phase structure of multi-layer sine-Gordon type models

Abstract We analyze the effective action and the phase structure of N-layer sine-Gordon type models, generalizing the results obtained for the two-layer sine-Gordon model found in [I. Nandori, S. Nagy, K. Sailer, U.D. Jentschura, Nucl. Phys. B, 725 (2005) 467–492]. Besides the obvious field theoretical interest, the layered sine-Gordon model has been used to describe the vortex properties of high transition temperature superconductors, and the extension of the previous analysis to a general N-layer model is necessary for a description of the critical behaviour of vortices in realistic multi-layer systems. The distinction of the Lagrangians in terms of mass eigenvalues is found to be the decisive parameter with respect to the phase structure of the N-layer models, with neighboring layers being coupled by quadratic terms in the field variables. By a suitable rotation of the field variables, we identify the periodic modes (without explicit mass terms) in the N-layer structure, calculate the effective action and determine their Kosterlitz–Thouless type phase transitions to occur at a coupling parameter β c , N 2 = 8 N π , where N is the number of layers (or flavors in terms of the multi-flavor Schwinger model).