Universal resistive transition for two-dimensional superconductors

Abstract

Vortex fluctuations are shown to imply that the resistance of a two-dimensional superconductor is a universal function of a certain combination of sample parameters. Analysis of experiments gives suggestive evidence for the validity of this universality. In view of the new results presented it is argued that recent resistance predictions based on the "asymptotic" Kosterlitz renormalization-group equations are only valid over a small temperature interval compared to the width of the resistive transition.