Journal of Statistical Physics, Vol. 76, Nos. 1/2, 1994. p. 361-395.
We study the two-dimensional Ginzburg-Landau model of a neutral superfluid in the vicinity of the vortex unbinding transition. The model is mapped onto an effective interacting vortex gas by a systematic perturbative elimination of all fluctuating degrees of freedom (amplitude and phase of the order parameter field) except the vortex positions. In the Coulomb gas descriptions derived previously in the literature, thermal amplitude fluctuations were neglected altogether. We argue that if one includes the latter, the vortices still form a two-
dimensional Coulomb gas, but the vortex fugacity can be substantially raised. Under the assumption that Minnhagen's generic phase diagram of the two-dimensional Coulomb gas is correct, our results then point to a first-order transition rather than a Kosterlitz-Thouless transition, provided the Ginzburg-Landau correlation length is large enough in units of a microscopic cutoff length for fluctuations. The experimental relevance of these results is briefly discussed.