29 research outputs found
Lectures on random polymers
These lecture notes are a guided tour through the fascinating world of polymer chains interacting with themselves and/or with their environment. The focus is on the mathematical description of a number of physical and chemical phenomena, with particular emphasis on phase transitions and space-time scaling. The topics covered, though only a selection, are typical for the area. Sections 1–3 describe models of polymers without disorder, Sections 4–6 models of polymers with disorder. Appendices A–E contain tutorials in which a number of key techniques are explained in more detail
A numerical approach to copolymers at selective interfaces
We consider a model of a random copolymer at a selective interface which
undergoes a localization/delocalization transition. In spite of the several
rigorous results available for this model, the theoretical characterization of
the phase transition has remained elusive and there is still no agreement about
several important issues, for example the behavior of the polymer near the
phase transition line. From a rigorous viewpoint non coinciding upper and lower
bounds on the critical line are known.
In this paper we combine numerical computations with rigorous arguments to
get to a better understanding of the phase diagram. Our main results include:
- Various numerical observations that suggest that the critical line lies
strictly in between the two bounds.
- A rigorous statistical test based on concentration inequalities and
super-additivity, for determining whether a given point of the phase diagram is
in the localized phase. This is applied in particular to show that, with a very
low level of error, the lower bound does not coincide with the critical line.
- An analysis of the precise asymptotic behavior of the partition function in
the delocalized phase, with particular attention to the effect of rare atypical
stretches in the disorder sequence and on whether or not in the delocalized
regime the polymer path has a Brownian scaling.
- A new proof of the lower bound on the critical line. This proof relies on a
characterization of the localized regime which is more appealing for
interpreting the numerical data.Comment: accepted for publication on J. Stat. Phy
Intrinsic Lipschitz graphs in Heisenberg groups and continuous solutions of a balance equation
In this paper we provide a characterization of intrinsic Lipschitz graphs in
the sub-Riemannian Heisenberg groups in terms of their distributional
gradients. Moreover, we prove the equivalence of different notions of
continuous weak solutions to the equation \phi_y+ [\phi^{2}/2]_t=w, where w is
a bounded function depending on \phi
Critical properties and finite--size estimates for the depinning transition of directed random polymers
We consider models of directed random polymers interacting with a defect
line, which are known to undergo a pinning/depinning (or
localization/delocalization) phase transition. We are interested in critical
properties and we prove, in particular, finite--size upper bounds on the order
parameter (the {\em contact fraction}) in a window around the critical point,
shrinking with the system size. Moreover, we derive a new inequality relating
the free energy \tf and an annealed exponent which describes extreme
fluctuations of the polymer in the localized region. For the particular case of
a --dimensional interface wetting model, we show that this implies an
inequality between the critical exponents which govern the divergence of the
disorder--averaged correlation length and of the typical one. Our results are
based on on the recently proven smoothness property of the depinning transition
in presence of quenched disorder and on concentration of measure ideas.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figure; accepted for publication on J. Stat. Phy
A user's guide to optimal transport
This text is an expanded version of the lectures given by the first author in the 2009 CIME summer school of Cetraro. It provides a quick and reasonably account of the classical theory of optimal mass transportation and of its more recent developments, including the metric theory of gradient flows, geometric and functional inequalities related to optimal transportation, the first and second order differential calculus in the Wasserstein space and the synthetic theory of metric measure spaces with Ricci curvature bounded from below
A general smoothing inequality for disordered polymers
This note sharpens the smoothing inequality of Giacomin and Toninelli for disordered polymers. This inequality is shown to be valid for any disorder distribution with locally ¿nite exponential moments, and to provide an asymptotically sharp constant for weak disorder. A key tool in the proof is an estimate that compares the e¿ect on the free energy of tilting, respectively, shifting the disorder distribution. This estimate holds in large generality (way beyond disordered polymers) and is of independent interest