Topological defects and phase transitions in 2D

Over the past 13 years, Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) at Nanyang Technological University
(NTU), Singapore is actively organizing events like workshops and conferences in latest research
areas to promote sciences in regional countries. Occasionally, Nobel laureates are invited to give
special public lectures to encourage interactions between students, young researchers and Nobel
laureates alike. Besides being a good opportunity for the younger generations to understand the
their works in layman terms, the public lectures serve as a source of inspiration to many with the
back-story of the Nobel laureates.

This year, IAS invited Professor John Michael Kosterlitz from Brown University to deliver his
lecture on topological defects and phase transitions in 2D. The lecture was held on 15 June 2017,
one week after the Workshop on Topological Phase Transitions and New Developments. The
director of IAS, Professor Phua Kok Khoo chaired the session with a welcoming speech and a short
introduction to the speaker before handing over to Prof Kosterlitz.

Before he discussed the work that won him the Nobel prize, Prof Kosterlitz shared his personal
story on how he involved himself into this field. After he graduated his PhD in high energy physics
at Oxford, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher in Torino, Italy. His next ideal position was at
CERN, Geneva. Due to a late submission of his application, he failed to secure a place in CERN,
but he got a post-doctoral position at the University of Birmingham instead. There, he met Professor
David Thouless and collaborated three papers [1, 2, 3] which eventually won him the Nobel Prize.
At this point, Prof Kosterlitz remarked that doing an important piece of work involves 90% of luck,
i.e. being at the right place, right time and solving the right problem. The rest 10% is being smart to
perform the calculation.

He then proceeded to inform the audience with his Nobel prize work. While the phase transition of
square lattice Ising model was solved analytically by Lars Onsager during the mid 40s, the phase
transition of two-component spin model was not completely understood. Landau's theory of phase
transitions states that in order for a system to have phase transitions, there must be a state of two
long range orders in low temperature. Meanwhile, Mermin-Wagner Theorem states that such long
range orders do not exist in 2D systems. Thus, it would seem that phase transitions do not exist in
2D systems. However, experiment confirmed otherwise, suggesting that a new interpretation was in
need to explain this phenomenon.
By studying the superfluid Helium films in 2D crystals, Prof Kosterlitz and Prof Thouless
discovered that there exists some high energy configurations, denoted as the vortices and anti-
vortices, that might explain the phase transitions in 2D systems. Since these excitations involve the
whole system, they are also called topological excitations. By their calculation, they found that
vortices and anti-vortices do not exist in low temperature. At high temperature, they are created but
paired up together, contributing almost nothing to the superfluid. However at a certain critical
temperature, such pairing disappears. Without the pairing, vortices and anti-vortices will then
dissipate the superfluid flow, causing the superfluid to become a normal fluid. This phase transition
is later known as Kosterlitz-Thouless transition.

The lecture was then followed by a quick Q & A session. I managed to jolt down the following three
questions and Prof Kosterlitz's responses.

1. What are the key differences of doing research in physics back in the 70s and modern days?
A: Back in the 70s, there was very little research about phase transition and we did not have enough
clue on what should be looked for in this area of research. Also, there were only a few numerical
simulations available.

2. What are the roles of numerical simulations in theoretical studies of physics?

A: As a physicist, the first thing that we always do is that we try to solve the problem analytically,
although it is more often than not we cannot do it. Therefore, we rely on computers and numerical
simulations, though one must be careful to aim for the problem that we want to solve while doing
numerical simulations. With computers getting more and more powerful, I can say that numerical
simulations will be even more important in future.

3. In your earlier speech, you mentioned that the work that won you the Nobel prize were published
in low impact journals. Is there a reason for that?
A: The only reason I brought that up is to say that just because one does not publish frequently or
publish in high impact journals, do not give up easily because you never know what is going to
happen in future.

The public lecture ended with Prof Phua presenting a token of appreciation to Prof Kosterlitz and a
light refreshment. Having attended the short course and the workshop, I have no problem in
understanding what Prof Kosterlitz was trying to deliver during this public lecture. In fact, I am
grateful that he shared more about his personal experiences in this lecture. I am sure that the
audience (including me) will get motivated by his talk for many years to come.

[1] J. M. Kosterlitz and D. J. Thouless. Long range order and metastability in two dimensional
solids and superfluids (Application of dislocation theory). Journal of Physics C, Solid State Physics
5(11) 1124, 1972.

[2] J. M. Kosterlitz and D. J. Thouless. Ordering, metastability and phase transition in two-
dimensional systems. Journal of Physics C, Solid State Physics 6(7) 1181, 1973.

[3] J. M. Kosterlitz. The critical properties of the two-dimensional xy model. Journal of Physics C,
Solid State Physics 7(6), 1046, 1974.