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Typical geometry of self-repelling polymers in a constant force field

Number of pages58
First online date2026-06-23
Abstract

We study a general class of self-repelling polymers on Z2, including the simple random walk, the self-avoiding walk and the repulsive Domb-Joyce model, in the presence of a constant force field acting on each monomer. Conditioning the polymer to have fixed length and fixed endpoints, we identify the limiting free energy and prove that typical trajectories concentrate exponentially near a deterministic macroscopic shape. This shape is characterized as the unique minimizer of a variational problem and can be interpreted as a geodesic of a height-dependent Finsler metric. We also analyze two limiting regimes with universal features: for small field strength, in the symmetric case, the geodesic is close to a classical catenary, while for large field strength it converges to a universal polygonal shape governed by the nearest-neighbor lattice constraint.

Keywords
  • Polymer
  • Gravitational field
  • Finsler metric
  • Concentration
  • Geodesic
  • Self-avoiding walk
  • Self repulsion
Citation (ISO format)
KHETTABI, Kamil, VELENIK, Yvan. Typical geometry of self-repelling polymers in a constant force field. 2026, p. 58.
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Creation24/06/2026 08:39:57
First validation24/06/2026 14:28:28
Update24/06/2026 14:28:28
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