Longitudinal fluctuations in the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless phase

We analyze the interplay of longitudinal and transverse thermal fluctuations in a U(1) symmetric two-dimensional phi(4) theory. Toward this end, we derive coupled renormalization-group equations for both types of fluctuations obtained from a linear (Cartesian) decomposition of the order-parameter field. Discarding the longitudinal fluctuations, the expected Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless phase characterized by a finite stiffness and an algebraic decay of order-parameter correlations is recovered. Renormalized by transverse fluctuations, the longitudinal mass scales to zero so that longitudinal fluctuations become increasingly important for small momenta. Within our expansion of the effective action, they generate a logarithmic decrease of the stiffness, in agreement with previous functional renormalization-group calculations. The logarithmic terms imply a deviation from the vanishing beta function for the stiffness in the nonlinear sigma model describing the phase fluctuations at three-loop order. To gain further insight, we also compute the flow of the parameters characterizing longitudinal and transverse fluctuations from a density-phase representation of the order-parameter field, with a cutoff on phase fluctuations. The power-law flow of the longitudinal mass and other quantities is thereby confirmed, but the stiffness remains finite in this approach. We conclude that the marginal flow of the stiffness obtained in the Cartesian representation is an artifact of the truncated expansion of momentum dependences.