End-to-end distance from the Green's function for a hierarchical self-avoiding walk in four dimensions (Q1416910)

This is a continuation of the authors' earlier work [with \textit{S. N. Evans}, Ann. Probab. 20, 82--124 (1992; Zbl 0742.60067)] on the large-time behavior of the self-repellent random walk in four dimensions, which is the critical dimension. Instead of the \` classical\'\ simple random walk on the four-dimensional lattice \(\mathbb Z^ 4\), the authors work with a Lévy process on the hierarchical lattice, whose four-dimensionality is expressed in terms of the Green's function. In this context, they prove that the expected end-to-end distance of the self-repellent process of length \(T\) is asymptotic to \(T^{1/2}(\log T)^{1/8}\). This is the rate that is expected in the above \` classical\'\ setting, and this problem is a long-standing open difficult problem. The hierarchical lattice, \(\mathbb G\), with parameter \(L\in\mathbb N\setminus\{1\}\) is the direct sum of infinitely many copies of \(\mathbb Z_ n=\{0,\dots,n-1\}\) with \(n=L^4\), more precisely, \(\mathbb G\) is the set of all sequences \(x=(x_ i)_{i\in\mathbb N_ 0}\) with coefficients in \(\mathbb Z_ n\), such that there is a smallest index \(N\in\mathbb N_ 0\) with \(x_ i=0\) for all \(i>N\). On \(\mathbb G\), there is an ultrametric, \({\text{dist}}(x,y)=| x-y| \), and \(| x| \) is defined as the above index \(N\). Let \((\omega(t))_{t\geq 0}\) be the Lévy process with \(\mathbb P(\omega(t+dt)=y\mid \omega(t)=x)= C| x-y| ^ {-6}\,dt\). if \(C\) is suitably chosen (in dependence on \(L\)), then the process \((\omega(t))_{t\geq 0}\) is four-dimensional in the sense that its Green's function satisfies \(G(x,y)=| x-y| ^{-2}\) for \(x\not= y\). Since the process does not have second moments, its end-to-end distance is measured in terms of \(\mathbb E[| \omega(T)| ^\alpha]^{1/\alpha}\) for some \(\alpha\in(0,2)\). The self-repellent random walk is defined as follows. Let \(\tau_ T(x)=\int_0^ T\, ds\, 1_{\{\omega(s)=x\}}\) be the local time of the process until time \(T\). Then \(\tau^ 2(\mathbb G) =\int_{\mathbb G}\,dx\,\tau_ T^ 2(x)=\int_0^ T \,ds \int_0^ T \,dt\,1_{\{\omega(s)=\omega(t)\}}\) (where \(\int_{\mathbb G}\,dx\) is over the Haar measure, i.e., the counting measure on \(\mathbb G\)), the self-intersection local time, measures the time the process spends in self-intersections until time \(T\). The self-repellent random walk is now defined as the Radon-Nikodym transformation with the density \(e^ {-\lambda \tau_ T^ 2}\), suitably normalized. The transformed expectation is denoted \(\mathbb E_ \lambda^ T\). Here \(\lambda\) is in the complex sector \(\{| {\text{arg}} (\lambda)| <\frac \pi 3\}\), even though only real values of \(\lambda\) make sense probabilistically. The main result of the paper (slightly simplified) is, that for any \(L\geq 2\), any \(\alpha\in(0,2)\), and any sufficiently small \(\lambda\), as \(T\to\infty\), \[ \mathbb E_\lambda^ T[| \omega(T)| ^\alpha]^{1/\alpha}=(1+o(1)) \mathbb E[| \omega(T\ell(T^{-1})^{1/4})| ^\alpha]^{1/\alpha}, \] where the time-rescale function \(\ell(T^ {-1})\) is roughly \(\log T\). Since (in a certain sense, which is a bit subtle) the free walk satisfies \(| \omega(T)| \approx c \sqrt T\), the main result implies that the self-repellent walk satisfies \(| \omega(T)| \approx cT^{1/2}(\log T)^{1/8}\), for small coupling constants \(\lambda\). The proof is based on a field-theoretic representation of the random walk, more precisely, on a representation of the Green's function of the self-repellent walk in terms of a Laplace transformation. A number of general technical results of the earlier paper (1992; loc. cit.) and more specific results from a companion paper [Commun. Math. Phys. 239, 549--584 (2003; Zbl 1087.82010)] are used, such that the technicalities of the present paper are kept low.