Ladislav Samaj
(SAS, Slovakia)
The statistical mechanics of the classical two-dimensional Coulomb gas is exactly solved
The subject of my talk is the equilibrium statistical mechanics of a classical two-dimensional Coulomb gas of positive/negative unit charges interacting via a logarithmic potential. This is the first exactly solvable model of a continuous (i.e. not on a lattice) fluid in more than one dimension. The exact solution, obtained via an equivalence with the integrable two-dimensional sine-Gordon field theory, includes the bulk thermodynamics, special cases of the surface thermodynamics and the large-distance asymptotic behavior of the particle correlation functions. The extension of the exact solution to the presence of some "guest" arbitrarily-charged particles immersed in the bulk of the Coulomb gas leads to various anomalous effects, such as an effective attraction between like-charged guest particles or the charge inversion in the vicinity of a highly-charged guest particle.