Physical limitations of the Hohenberg-Mermin-Wagner theorem

The Hohenberg-Mermin-Wagner (HMW) theorem states that infrared (IR) fluctuations prevent long-range order which breaks continuous symmetries in two dimensions (2D), at finite temperatures. We note that the theorem becomes physically effective for superconductivity (SC) only for astronomical sample sizes, so it does not prevent 2D SC in practice. We systematically explore the sensitivity of the magnetic and SC versions of the theorem to finite-size and disorder effects. For magnetism, finite-size effects, disorder, and perpendicular coupling can all restore the order parameter at a non-negligible value of T_c equally well, making the physical reason for finite T_c sample-dependent. For SC, an alternative version of the HMW theorem is presented, in which the temperature cutoff is set by Cooper pairing, in place of the Fermi energy in the standard version. It still allows 2D SC at 2-3 times the room temperature when the interaction scale is large and Cooper pairs are small, the case with high-T_c SC in the cuprates. Thus IR fluctuations do not prevent 2D SC at room temperatures in samples of any reasonable size, by any known version of the HMW argument. A possible approach to derive mechanism-dependent upper bounds for SC T_c is pointed out.