Quenched averages for self-avoiding walks and polygons on deterministic fractals (Q863503)

The authors study rooted self avoiding polygons and self avoiding walks on deterministic fractal lattices of finite ramification index. The number of rooted open walks \(W_n(S)\) and rooted self-avoiding polygons \(P_n(S)\) of \(n\) steps, passing through particular site \(S\), are considered. Exact recursion equations, i.~e., the renormalization equations, are used to determine generating functions \(P_n(S)\) and \(W_n(S)\). These are used to compute the averages \(\langle P_n(S) \rangle\), \(\langle W_n(S) \rangle\), \(\langle \log P_n(S) \rangle\), and \(\langle \log W_n(S) \rangle\) over different positions of \(S\). Besides, annealed and quenched averages are calculated. The considered fractal is nearly homogeneous, and the difference between these averages is not large. It is shown that the value of the growth constant \(\mu\) and the size exponent \(\nu\) are the same for the quenched and annealed cases, but the critical exponents \(\gamma\) and \(\alpha\) do differ in the two cases. In particular, the hyperscaling relation \(d \nu = 2 - \alpha\) is valid only for the annealed average. Rigorous bounds on the quenched exponents are obtained, and their values are estimated numerically to a very good precision.