Critical behavior and duality in extended sine-Gordon theories

Abstract

We study the critical properties of vectorial sine-Gordon theories based on the root system of simply-laced Lie algebras. We introduce the dual operators and study the renormalization aspects of these theories. These models are identified with vectorial Coulomb gas models of electric and magnetic charges and generalized Toda field theories. We prove that these theories are consistently renormalizable for simply-laced Lie algebras, but non-renormalizable in general in the non-simply-laced case. These models provide a description for the statistical mechanics of melting in the SU(3) case. They also provide a simplified model for strings compactified on root lattices. We compute the RG beta functions to quadratic order for general simply-laced algebras and find that in general there is a Weyl singlet, self-dual fixed point. This fixed point describes a critical theory with condensates of electric and magnetic charges corresponding to tachyonic and winding modes in string language. The different phases are related by Weyl and duality symmetry. The phase structure is conjectured in the general case, and analyzed in detail for SU(3) and SO(6). We compute Zamolodchikov's c-function to cubic order in the couplings in the general case and the conformal anomaly at the self-dual fixed point for SU( N).