We prove a formula conjectured in O'Connell and Yor (2001) for the free energy density of a directed polymer in a Brownian environment in 1+1 dimensions.
We prove a central limit theorem for the winding number of a directed polymer on a cylinder, which is equivalent with proving the Gaussian fluctuations of the endpoint of the directed polymer in a spatial periodic environment.
We consider tightness for families of non-colliding Brownian bridges above a hard wall, which are subject to geometrically growing self-potentials of tilted area type. The model is introduced in order to mimic level lines of $2+1$ discrete Solid-On-Solid random interfaces above a hard wall.
We prove tightness and limiting Brownian-Gibbs description for line ensembles of non-colliding Brownian bridges above a hard wall, which are subject to geometrically growing self-potentials of tilted area type. Statistical properties of the resulting ensemble are very different from that of non-colliding Brownian bridges without self-potentials. The model itself was introduced in order to mimic level lines of (2+1)-dimensional discrete Solid-On-Solid random interfaces above a hard wall.
It is a well-known open problem in the literature on random polymers to show that a directed polymer in random environment localizes around a favorite path at low temperature. A precise statement of this conjecture is formulated and proved in this article.
We consider the Brownian directed polymer in Poissonian environment in dimension 1+1, under the so-called intermediate disorder regime, which is a crossover regime between the strong and weak disorder regions. We show that, under a diffusive scaling involving different parameters of the system, the renormalized point-to-point partition function of the polymer converges in law to the solution of the stochastic heat equation with Gaussian multiplicative noise. The Poissonian environment provides a natural setting and strong tools, such as the Wiener-Ito chaos expansion, which, applied to the par…
We study the scaling exponents of a 1+1-dimensional directed polymer in a Brownian random environment introduced by O'Connell and Yor. For a version of the model with boundary conditions that are stationary in a space-time sense we identify the exact values of the exponents. For the version without the boundary conditions we get the conjectured upper bounds on the exponents.
Very recently, Junk [11] showed that for directed polymers in bounded random environments, the weak disorder (uniform integrable) phase implies that the polymer martingale is bounded in $L^p$ for some $p>1$ and also in $L^q$ for some $q<0$. Here, we establish this characterization of the weak disorder phase without requiring the boundedness assumption on the environments.
We consider the fluctuations of the free energy of positive temperature directed polymers in thin rectangles (N,N^α), α< 3/14. For general weight distributions with finite fourth moment we prove that the distribution of these fluctuations converges as N goes to infinity to the GUE Tracy-Widom distribution.
We give an explicit formula for the joint density of the max and argmax of the Airy$_2$ process minus a parabola. The argmax has a universal distribution which governs the rescaled endpoint for large time or temperature of directed polymers in 1+1 dimensions.
We consider $(1+1)$-dimensional directed polymers in a random potential and provide sufficient conditions guaranteeing joint localization. Joint localization means that for typical realizations of the environment, and for polymers started at different starting points, all the associated endpoint distributions localize in a common random region that does not grow with the length of the polymer. In particular, we prove that joint localization holds when the reference random walk of the polymer model is either a simple symmetric lattice walk or a Gaussian random walk. We also prove that the very …
In this short note, we prove a central limit theorem for a type of replica overlap of the Brownian directed polymer in a Gaussian random environment, in the low temperature regime and in all dimensions. The proof relies on a superconcentration result for the KPZ equation driven by a spatially mollified noise, which is inspired by the recent work of Chatterjee \cite{C1}.
In last passage percolation models lying in the KPZ universality class, the energy of long energy-maximizing paths may be studied as a function of the paths' pair of endpoint locations. Scaled coordinates may be introduced, so that these maximizing paths, or polymers, now cross unit distances with unit-order fluctuations, and have scaled energy, or weight, of unit order. In this article, we consider Brownian last passage percolation in these scaled coordinates. In the narrow wedge case, when one endpoint of such polymers is fixed, say at $(0,0) \in \mathbb{R}^2$, and the other is varied horizo…
We prove that the random variable $\ct=\argmax_{t\in\rr}\{\aip(t)-t^2\}$ has tails which decay like $e^{-ct^3}$. The distribution of $\ct$ is a universal distribution which governs the rescaled endpoint of directed polymers in 1+1 dimensions for large time or temperature.
We compute the fluctuation exponents for a solvable model of one-dimensional directed polymers in random environment in the intermediate regime. This regime corresponds to taking the inverse temperature to zero with the size of the system. The exponents satisfy the KPZ scaling relation and coincide with physical predictions. In the critical case, we recover the fluctuation exponents of the Cole-Hopf solution of the KPZ equation in equilibrium and close to equilibrium.
In last passage percolation models lying in the KPZ universality class, long maximizing paths have a typical deviation from the linear interpolation of their endpoints governed by the two-thirds power of the interpolating distance. This two-thirds power dictates a choice of scaled coordinates, in which these maximizers, now called polymers, cross unit distances with unit-order fluctuations. In this article, we consider Brownian last passage percolation in these scaled coordinates, and prove that the probability of the presence of $k$ disjoint polymers crossing a unit-order region while beginni…
We study a (1+1)-dimensional directed polymer in a random environment on the integer lattice with log-gamma distributed weights. Among directed polymers, this model is special in the same way as the last-passage percolation model with exponential or geometric weights is special among growth models, namely, both permit explicit calculations. With appropriate boundary conditions, the polymer with log-gamma weights satisfies an analogue of Burke's theorem for queues. Building on this, we prove the conjectured values for the fluctuation exponents of the free energy and the polymer path, in the cas…
We consider a stochastic model of N evolving particles studied by Brunet and Derrida. This model can be seen as a directed polymer in random medium with N sites in the transverse direction. Cook and Derrida, use heuristic arguments to obtain a formula for the ground state energy of the polymer. In this paper, we formalize their argument and show that there is an additional term in the formula in the critical case. We also consider a generalization of the model, and show that in the noncritical case the behavior is basically the same, whereas in the critical case a new correction appears.
We study a quenched charged-polymer model, introduced by Garel and Orland in 1988, that reproduces the folding/unfolding transition of biopolymers. We prove that, below the critical inverse temperature, the polymer is delocalized in the sense that: (1) The rescaled trajectory of the polymer converges to the Brownian path; and (2) The partition function remains bounded. At the critical inverse temperature, we show that the maximum time spent at points jumps discontinuously from 0 to a positive fraction of the number of monomers, in the limit as the number of monomers tends to infinity. Finally,…
We study the free energy of the directed polymer in random environment in dimension 1+1 and 1+2. For dimension 1, we improve the statement of Comets and Vargas concerning very strong disorder by giving sharp estimates on the free energy at high temperature. In dimension 2, we prove that very strong disorder holds at all temperatures, thus solving a long standing conjecture in the field.
We investigate the high-temperature behavior of the directed polymer model in dimension $1+2$. More precisely we study the difference $Δ\mathtt{F}(β)$ between the quenched and annealed free energies for small values of the inverse temperature $β$. This quantity is associated to localization properties of the polymer trajectories, and is related to the overlap fraction of two replicas. Adapting recent techniques developed by the authors in the context of the disordered pinning model (Berger and Lacoin, arXiv:1503.07315 [math-ph]), we identify the sharp asymptotic high temperature behavior \[\li…
We show that the partition function of the multi-layer semi-discrete directed polymer converges in the intermediate disorder regime to the partition function for the multi-layer continuum polymer introduced by O'Connell and Warren. This verifies, modulo a previously hidden constant, an outstanding conjecture proposed by Corwin and Hammond. A consequence is the identification of the KPZ line ensemble as logarithms of ratios of consecutive layers of the continuum partition function. Other properties of the continuum partition function, such as continuity, strict positivity and contour integral f…
We characterize the law of the partition function of a Brownian directed polymer model in terms of a diffusion process associated with the quantum Toda lattice. The proof is via a multidimensional generalization of a theorem of Matsumoto and Yor concerning exponential functionals of Brownian motion. It is based on a mapping which can be regarded as a geometric variant of the RSK correspondence.
In the zero temperature Brownian semi-discrete directed polymer we study the joint distribution of two last-passage times at positions ordered in the time-like direction. This is the situation when we have the slow de-correlation phenomenon. We compute the limiting joint distribution function in a scaling limit. This limiting distribution is given by an expansion in determinants which is not a Fredholm expansion. A somewhat similar looking formula was derived non-rigorously in a related model by Dotsenko.
We study models for a directed polymer in a random environment (DPRE) in which the polymer traverses a hierarchical diamond graph and the random environment is defined through random variables attached to the vertices. For these models, we prove a distributional limit theorem for the partition function in a limiting regime wherein the system grows as the coupling of the polymer to the random environment is appropriately attenuated. The sequence of diamond graphs is determined by a choice of a branching number $b\in \{2,3,\ldots\}$ and segmenting number $s\in \{2,3,\ldots\}$, and our focus is o…
Directed polymers in random environment have usually been constructed with a simple random walk on the integer lattice. It has been observed before that several standard results for this model continue to hold for a more general reference walk. Some finer results are known for the so-called long-range directed polymer in which the reference walk lies in the domain of attraction of an $α$-stable process. In this note, low-temperature localization properties recently proved for the classical case are shown to be true with any reference walk. First, it is proved that the polymer's endpoint distri…
It is shown that when $d\ge 3$, the growing random surface generated by the $(d+1)$-dimensional directed polymer model at sufficiently high temperature, after being smoothed by taking microscopic local averages, converges to a solution of the deterministic KPZ equation in a suitable scaling limit.
We consider directed polymer models involving multiple non-intersecting random walks moving through a space-time disordered environment in one spatial dimension. For a single random walk, Alberts, Khanin and Quastel proved that under intermediate disorder scaling (in which time and space are scaled diffusively, and the strength of the environment is scaled to zero in a critical manner) the polymer partition function converges to the solution to the stochastic heat equation with multiplicative white noise. In this paper we prove the analogous result for multiple non-intersecting random walks st…
We study the semi-discrete directed polymer model introduced by O'Connell-Yor in its stationary regime, based on our previous work on the stationary $q$-totally asymmetric simple exclusion process ($q$-TASEP) using a two-sided $q$-Whittaker process. We give a formula for the free energy distribution of the polymer model in terms of Fredholm determinant and show that the universal KPZ stationary distribution appears in the long time limit. We also consider the limit to the stationary KPZ equation and discuss the connections with previously found formulas.
We consider two models for directed polymers in space-time independent random media (the O'Connell-Yor semi-discrete directed polymer and the continuum directed random polymer) at positive temperature and prove their KPZ universality via asymptotic analysis of exact Fredholm determinant formulas for the Laplace transform of their partition functions. In particular, we show that for large time tau, the probability distributions for the free energy fluctuations, when rescaled by tau^{1/3}, converges to the GUE Tracy-Widom distribution. We also consider the effect of boundary perturbations to the…
In this paper, we introduce a model of Brownian polymer in a continuous random environment. The asymptotic behavior of the partition function associated to this polymer measure is studied, and we are able to separate a weak and strong disorder regime under some reasonable assumptions on the spatial covariance of the environment. Some further developments, concerning some concentration inequalities for the partition function, are given for the weak disorder regime.
We study a continuum model of directed polymer in random environment. The law of the polymer is defined as the Brownian motion conditioned to survive among space-time Poissonian disasters. This model is well-studied in the positive temperature regime. However, at zero-temperature, even the existence of the free energy has not been proved. In this article, we prove that the free energy exists and is continuous at zero-temperature.
In this article, we derive strong localization results for directed polymers in random environment. We show that at "low temperature" the polymer measure is asymptotically concentrated at a few points of macroscopic mass (we call these points epsilon-atoms). These results are derived assuming weak conditions on the tail decay of the random environment.
In this paper, we study a model of directed polymers in random environment, where the environment is restricted to a time-space tube whose spatial width grows polynomially with time. It can be viewed as an interpolation between the disordered pinning model and the classic directed polymer model. We prove weak coupling limits for the directed polymer partition functions in such tube environments in all dimensions, as the inverse temperature vanishes at a suitable rate. As the tube width varies, transitions between regimes of disorder irrelevance, marginal relevance and disorder relevance are ob…
Recently, Bauke and Mertens conjectured that the local statistics of energies in random spin systems with discrete spin space should, in most circumstances, be the same as in the random energy model. We show that this conjecture holds true as well for directed polymers in random environment. We also show that, under certain conditions, this conjecture holds for directed polymers even if energy levels that grow moderately with the volume of the system are considered.
In this note we show that in any dimension $d$, the strong disorder property implies the strong localization property. This is established for a continuous time model of directed polymers in a random environment : the parabolic Anderson Model.
We consider two directed polymer models in the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) universality class: the O'Connell-Yor semi-discrete directed polymer with boundary sources and the continuum directed random polymer with (m,n)-spiked boundary perturbations. The free energy of the continuum polymer is the Hopf-Cole solution of the KPZ equation with the corresponding (m,n)-spiked initial condition. This new initial condition is constructed using two semi-discrete polymer models with independent bulk randomness and coupled boundary sources. We prove that the limiting fluctuations of the free energies resca…
This paper provides information about the asymptotic behavior of a one-dimensional Brownian polymer in random medium represented by a space-time Gaussian field W assumed to be white noise in time and function-valued in space. According to the behavior of the spatial covariance W, we give a lower bound on the power growth (wandering exponent) of the polymer when the time parameter goes to infinity: the polymer is proved to be superdiffusive, with a wandering exponent exceeding any $α<3/5$.
We study a model of directed polymers with an exponentially recurrent Markov chain and an indefinitely divisible random environment. We prove that the normalized partition function converges exponentially fast towards zero at all temperatures.
We show that the endpoint large deviation rate function for a continuous-time directed polymer agrees with the rate function of the underlying random walk near the origin in the whole weak disorder phase.
This paper provides information about the asymptotic behavior of a one-dimensional Brownian polymer in random medium represented by a Gaussian field $W$ on ${\mathbb{R}}_+\times{\mathbb{R}}$ which is white noise in time and function-valued in space. According to the behavior of the spatial covariance of $W$, we give a lower bound on the power growth (wandering exponent) of the polymer when the time parameter goes to infinity: the polymer is proved to be superdiffusive, with a wandering exponent exceeding any $α<3/5$.
In this note we give upper bounds for the free energy of discrete polymers in random media. The bounds are given by the so-called generalized multiplicative cascades from the statistical theory of turbulence. For the polymer model, we derive that the quenched free energy is different from the annealed one in dimension 1, for any finite temperature and general environment. This implies localization of the polymer.
Several authors have studied convergence in distribution to the Brownian web under diffusive scaling of Markovian random walks. In a paper by R. Roy, K. Saha and A. Sarkar, convergence to the Brownian web is proved for a system of coalescing random paths -- the Random Directed Forest -- which are not Markovian. Paths in the Random Directed Forest do not cross each other before coalescence. Here we study a generalization of the non-Markovian Random Directed Forest where paths can cross each other and prove convergence to the Brownian web. This provides an example of how the techniques to prove …
We consider the convergence of partition functions and endpoint density for the half-space directed polymer model in dimension $1+1$ in the intermediate disorder regime as considered for the full space model by Alberts, Khanin and Quastel in [AKQ]. By scaling the inverse temperature like $βn^{-1/4}$, the point-to-point partition function converges to the chaos series for the solution to stochastic heat equation with Robin boundary condition and delta initial data. We also apply our convergence results to the exact-solvable log-gamma directed polymer model in a half-space.
I discuss models for a continuum directed random polymer in a disordered environment in which the polymer lives on a fractal called the \textit{diamond hierarchical lattice}, a self-similar metric space forming a network of interweaving pathways. This fractal depends on a branching parameter $b\in \mathbb{N}$ and a segmenting number $s\in \mathbb{N}$. For $s>b$ my focus is on random measures on the set of directed paths that can be formulated as a subcritical Gaussian multiplicative chaos. This path measure is analogous to the continuum directed random polymer introduced by Alberts, Khanin, Qu…
For a directed polymer model in random environment, a characterization of the weak disorder phase in terms of the moment of the renormalized partition function has been proved in [S. Junk: Communications in Mathematical Physics 389, 1087-1097 (2022)]. We extend this characterization to a large class of unbounded environments which includes many commonly used distributions.
We give sharp estimate for the free energy of directed polymers in random environment in dimension 1+1. This estimate was known for a Gaussian environment, we extend it to the case where the law of the environment is infinitely divisible.
This paper presents a new, short proof of the computation of the upper tail large deviation rate function for the Brownian directed percolation model. Through a distributional equivalence between the last passage time in this model and the largest eigenvalue in a random matrix drawn from the Gaussian Unitary Ensemble, this provides a new proof a previously known result. The method leads to associated results for the stationary Brownian directed percolation model which have not been observed before.