Agradecimientos:
This work was supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología of Spain and FEDER through Grant Nos. BFM2000-0004 (J.A.C.), BFM2000-0006 (S.A. and A.S.), BFM2001- 0341-C02-01, and BFM2000-1108 (R.T.).
We study the one-dimensional sine-Gordon model as a prototype of roughening phenomena. In spite of the
fact that it has been recently proven that this model cannot have any phase transition @J. A. Cuesta and A.
Sánchez, J. Phys. A 35, 2373 (2002), Langevin aWe study the one-dimensional sine-Gordon model as a prototype of roughening phenomena. In spite of the
fact that it has been recently proven that this model cannot have any phase transition @J. A. Cuesta and A.
Sánchez, J. Phys. A 35, 2373 (2002), Langevin as well as Monte Carlo simulations strongly suggest the
existence of a finite temperature separating a flat from a rough phase. We explain this result by means of the
transfer operator formalism and show as a consequence that sine-Gordon lattices of any practically achievable
size will exhibit this apparent phase transition at unexpectedly large temperatures.[+][-]
