Universality classes of dense polymers and conformal sigma models


Abstract in English

In the usual statistical model of a dense polymer (a single space-filling loop on a lattice) in two dimensions the loop does not cross itself. We modify this by including intersections in which {em three} lines can cross at the same point, with some statistical weight w per crossing. We show that our model describes a line of critical theories with continuously-varying exponents depending on w, described by a conformally-invariant non-linear sigma model with varying coupling constant g_sigma^2 >0. For the boundary critical behavior, or the model defined in a strip, we propose an exact formula for the ell-leg exponents, h_ell=g_sigma^2 ell(ell-2)/8, which is shown numerically to hold very well.

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