Pinning of polymers and interfaces by random potentials (Q997945)

The authors consider a polymer model in the presence of a random potential. The monomer locations are modeled by the trajectory of a Markov chain. The spatially random potential interacts with the polymer when it visits a particular site, \(0\). The random potential is given by iid random variables with mean \(u\). There is a critical value of \(u\) above which the polymer is pinned, and below which it is unpinned. The main result of the paper is a proof of the fact that the presence of disorder lowers the value of the critical point, \(u^*\). That is, the critical value in the case when the random variables have positive variance is strictly smaller than in the case when the potential is constant. It is also shown that, if the excursion length of the Markov chain has polynomial tails and the random potential does not have exponential moments, then pinning occurs for all values of \(u\).