Self-avoiding paths on the pre-Sierpinski gasket (Q909367)

The statistical mechanics of self-avoiding paths on the pre-Sierpiński gasket is studied. The following results are obtained: (i) The existence of the thermodynamical limit for the free energy is established. The unusual feature of the model is that there exists a critical inverse temperature \(\beta_ c\) such that the effective numbers of ``degrees of freedom'' below and above \(\beta_ c\) are different. (ii) The properties of the free energy are investigated. In particular, it is proven that \(\beta_ c\) is really a critical point, namely \[ f(\beta)=(\beta_ c-\beta)^ a,\quad a\simeq 1.3,\quad \beta \uparrow \beta_ c,\quad and\quad f(\beta)=-(\beta -\beta_ c)^ b,\quad b\simeq 0.8,\quad \beta \downarrow \beta_ c, \] where f(\(\beta)\) is the free energy. (iii) The limiting probability distribution of the scaled length of the paths is derived.