Phase structure of (2+1)d strongly coupled lattice gauge theories

Nucl .Phys. Proc. Suppl. 129 (2004) 608-610 We study the chiral phase transition in (2+1)d strongly coupled U(N) lattice gauge theories with staggered fermions. We show with high precision simulations performed directly in the chiral limit that these models undergo a Berezinski-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition. We also show that this universality class is unaffected even in the large N limit.