A note on wetting transition for gradient fields. (Q1877392)

The wetting transition for the gradient field \(\{\Phi _x\in \mathbb R^+; x\in \mathbb Z^d\}\), modelling the heights of an interface in the presence of a wall at height zero, for two kinds of models is investigated. The first case of the SOS model is based on the interaction \(\sum _{\langle x,y\rangle}| \Phi _x-\Phi _y| \) with boundary condition \(\sum | \Phi _x| \) and pinning potential \(-b\sum 1_{\{\Phi _x\leq a\}}\). In the other (Gaussian) case, the absolute value is replaced by power two. The wetting is described by means of the average ratio of the number \(\rho (a,b)\) of ``pinned sites'' (\(x\)'s with \(\Phi _x\leq a\)). It is shown that the SOS model exhibits the wetting phenomena for all \(d\geq 1\), whence the presence of the wetting just for \(d=2\) is shown for the Gaussian model. Together with the recent result of \textit{E. Bolthausen, J. D. Deuschel} and \textit{O. Zeitouni} [J. Math. Phys. 41, 1211--1223 (2000; Zbl 0977.82019)] that the wetting is absent for \(d\geq 3\) in the Gaussian case. The proofs here are based on a method of \textit{J. T. Chalker} [J. Phys. A, Math. Gen. 15, L481--L485 (1982)].