Collapse transition of the interacting prudent walk (Q1667159)

The authors are mainly concerned with the interacting prudent self-avoiding walk (short, IPSAW), a model built with prudent paths, i.e., non-directed self-avoiding paths which cannot take a step towards a previously visited lattice site. The authors give a rigorous mathematical definition of the IPSAW. They compare the results given in the paper with the existing literature. The authors show how the IPSAW can be viewed as a limiting case of the undirected polymer in a poor solvent studied by \textit{R. van der Hofstad} and \textit{A. Klenke} [Ann. Appl. Probab. 11, No. 4, 1079--1115 (2001; Zbl 1043.60016)] and \textit{R. van der Hofstad} et al. [J. Stat. Phys. 106, No. 3--4, 477--520 (2002; Zbl 1001.82124)]. Mainly, the authors discuss the following open problems: (1) Compute \(\beta^{\mathrm{ISAW}}_c\) and therefore determine whether or not \(\beta^{\mathrm{ISAW}}_c>\beta^{\mathrm{IPDSAW}}_c\), where \(\beta^{\mathrm{ISAW}}_c\) and \(\beta^{\mathrm{IPDSAW}}_c\) are the critical points and \(\beta\) is the interaction intensity. (2) Provide the scaling limit of the IPSAW in its three regimes, i.e., extended, critical and collapsed. (3) Prove that the ISAW also undergoes a collapse transition at some \(\beta\geq 0\). They obtain some new light on the existence of a conjectured critical curve for this model. The authors then present an algorithm which shows that the free energy of the IPSAW coincides with that of the North-East interacting prudent self-avoiding walk (short, NE-IPSAW). The authors prove that the free energies of the IPSAW and of the NEIPSAW are equal, that is, for \(\beta\geq 0\), \(F(\beta)=F^{\mathrm{NE}}(\beta)\). Let \(Z^{\mathrm{ISAW}}_{L,\beta}\) be the partition function of the ISAW and its free energy is determined as \(F^{\mathrm{ISAW}}(\beta)=\underset{L\rightarrow \infty}{\lim \inf }\frac{1}{L}Z_{L,\beta }^{\mathrm{ISAW}}\). Also, the authors prove that, for \(\beta\in [0,\infty)\), the inequality \(F^{\mathrm{ISAW}}(\beta)>\beta\) is satisfied.