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Monte Carlo study of duality and the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transitions of the two-dimensional $q$-state clock model in flow representations

The two-dimensional $q$-state clock model for $q \geq 5$ undergoes two Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) phase transitions as temperature decreases. Here we report an extensive worm-type simulation of the square-lattice clock model for $q=$5--9 in a pair of flow representations, from the high- and low-temperature expansions, respectively. By finite-size scaling analysis of susceptibility-like quantities, we determine the critical points with a precision improving over the existing results. Due to the dual flow representations, each point in the critical region is observed to simultaneously exhibit a pair of anomalous dimensions, which are $η_1=1/4$ and $η_2 = 4/q^2$ at the two BKT transitions. Further, the approximate self-dual points $β_{\rm sd}(L)$, defined by the stringent condition that the susceptibility like quantities in both flow representations are identical, are found to be nearly independent of system size $L$ and behave as $β_{\rm sd} \simeq q/2π$ asymptotically at the large-$q$ limit. The exponent $η$ at $β_{\rm sd}$ is consistent with $1/q$ within statistical error as long as $q \geq 5$. Based on this, we further conjecture that $η(β_{\rm sd}) = 1/q$ holds exactly and is universal for systems in the $q$-state clock universality class. Our work provides a vivid demonstration of rich phenomena associated with the duality and self-duality of the clock model in two dimensions.