We have studied the nonlinear current-voltage characteristic of a two dimensional lattice Coulomb gas by Monte Carlo simulation. We present three different determinations of the power-law exponent $a(T)$ of the nonlinear current-voltage characteristic, $V
B.Thermallyactivatedresistance
Theabovescalingargumentledtoa nitesizescalingformulawhichisusefulforlocating
thetransitiontemperaturefromMonteCarlodatafortheresistanceof nitesamples.Here
wewilldoamoredetailedanalysisthatwillalsoleadtothesameformula.Theanalysishere
doesnotdirectlyinvolvescalingarguments,butconsiderstheinteractionsbetweenvortices
intheCoulombgas.Theanalysiswillgiveexpressionsfortheresistancefromthermally
activatedfreevorticesintheCoulombgasinthepresenceofanappliedsupercurrent.This
moredetailedanalysiswillbeusefulinlatersectionswhenweanalyzeMonteCarlodatafor
theCoulombgas.
AccordingtotheJosephsonrelationthevoltageVcausedbyvortexmotionis
V~d φ
I~nF(7)
Tomakeanestimateofthedensityoffreevorticesweproceedbythefollowingsimplemodel.
TheenergyE(r)ofavortexpairofseparationr>r0inthepresenceofacurrentIis[17]:
E(r)=E0+E1ln(r
2π
(k)