Renormalization group studies of phase diagrams of Ising and XY-model films of variable thickness

We compare the critical behavior of $\text{spin}\text{-}\text{1}\text{2}$ Ising model (ordinary phase transition in two dimensions) and classical XY-model (topological phase transition in two dimensions) films, with two flat surfaces and nearest neighbor couplings K_S between surface spins and K_B between all others, as a function of film thickness. We carry out a real space Migdal-style renormalization in two stages. In the bulk stage the film is first renormalized towards a double layer, with the renormalized parameters as inter- and intra-layer couplings. Then the double layer is renormalized with those couplings as initial parameters. From the RG-equations for the bulk stage we find a tricritical point, not only for the Ising model (in which case it is well known) but also for the XY-model. It signals the existence of distinct surface and bulk transitions for sufficiently large values of $\text{K}{}_{\mathrm{<mtext>S</mtext>}}\text{K}{}_{\mathrm{<mtext>B</mtext>}}$. For the Ising model the complete program can be carried out and the phase diagram for films of arbitrary thickness is constructed. For the double layer XY-model a sufficiently complex Migdal-style renormalization appears to be unfeasible, presumably due to the possible presence of strings between the layers. Therefore, in an alternative approach, two representations for the partition function of the double layer XY-model are given. The system can be described in terms of its topological excitations, i.e., vortices on each layer and strings, either closed or terminating in vortices, between them. The system is also written as three coupled Coulomb gases. Based on this representation a renormalization group is found, and used, together with a Griffiths inequality for the correlation functions, to obtain information on the phase diagram. If there is a single phase transition, there is one phase where the correlations exhibit power law behavior and another where they fall off exponentially. The transition temperature increases monotonously with interlayer coupling to twice its value in two dimensions, but the nature of the phase transition for any finite inter-layer coupling appears to be different from that at zero coupling. We suggest that this is associated with the behavior of the internal strings. These results should be relevant for the renormalization of the film with isotropic bulk couplings as well as for layered systems of finite thickness, with different inter- and intra-layer couplings.