Arjun Krishnan (University of Rochester)

Title: The phase diagram of the polymer model.

Abstract: 

In dimension 1, the directed polymer model is in the celebrated KPZ universality class, and for all positive temperatures, a typical polymer path shows non-Brownian KPZ scaling behavior. In dimensions 3 or larger, it is a classical fact that the polymer has two phases: Brownian behavior at high temperature, and non-Brownian behavior at low temperature. We consider the response of the polymer to an external field or tilt, and show that at fixed temperature, the polymer has Brownian behavior for some fields and non-Brownian behavior for others. In other words, the external field can *induce* the phase transition in the directed polymer model.