Differential renormalization-group approach to the layered sine-Gordon model

A new qualitative view of vortex length-scale dependence has been found in recent electrical transport measurements performed on strongly anisotropic Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8 single crystals in zero magnetic field. This indicates the need for a better description of the 3D/2D crossover in vortex dimensionality. The vortex-dominated properties of high transition temperature superconductors with extremely high anisotropy ( layered systems) are reasonably well described in the framework of the layered XY model which can be mapped onto the layered sine-Gordon model. For the latter we derive an exact renormalization group (RG) equation using Wegner's and Houghton's approach in the local potential approximation. The agreement of the UV scaling laws found by us by linearizing the RG equations with those obtained previously in the literature in the dilute gas approximation makes apparent the improvement which can be achieved by solving our RG equations numerically.