A class of weakly self-avoiding walks (Q1012649)

For a simple symmetric random walk path \(S_0,\ldots,S_n\) on the integer lattice, consider the \(p\)-fold intersection local time (\(p=2,3,\ldots\)) \[ \Lambda_n(p)=\sum_{i_1,\dots,i_p=0}^{n}\mathbf{1}(S_{i_1}=\dots=S_{i_p}). \] The authors study the distribution of the maximal value \(\bar S_n:=\max(|S_0|,\dots,|S_n|)\) under the constraint that \(\Lambda_n(p)\) be small. In classical models of weakly self-avoiding walks like the Domb-Joyce model, \(\Lambda_n(2)\) is considered as a Hamiltonian. However, here the authors consider the hard contraint \(\Lambda_n(p)\leq n^\beta\) for \(\beta\in(1,(p+1)/2)\). They show (Theorem 1) that under this condition, \(\bar S_n\) is of order \(n^\alpha\) for \(\alpha=\frac{p-\beta}{p-1}\). More precisely (Theorem 2), they show (i) that the conditional probability for \(\bar S_n>n^a\) decays subexponentially for \(a\in(\alpha,1)\) and (ii) that the conditional probability for \(\bar S_n<n^a\) equals zero for all sufficiently large \(n\) for all \(a\in(0,\alpha)\). Finally (Theorem 3), the authors compute the large deviation lower tails of \(\Lambda_n(p)\).