Maximum and coupling of the sine-Gordon field

Abstract: For $0<\beta<6\pi$, we prove that the distribution of the centred maximum of the $\epsilon$-regularised continuum sine-Gordon field on the two-dimensional torus converges to a randomly shifted Gumbel distribution as $\epsilon \to 0$. Our proof relies on a strong coupling at all scales of the sine-Gordon field with the Gaussian free field, of independent interest, and extensions of existing methods for the maximum of the lattice Gaussian free field.