Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Date of Award

1-1-2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D. in Mathematics

First Advisor

Jeremy T. Clark

Second Advisor

Jeremy T. Clark

Third Advisor

Kevin Beach

Relational Format

dissertation/thesis

Abstract

We compare three models for a directed polymer in a random environment (DPRE): the rectangular lattice, the branching lattice, and the diamond hierarchical lattice. Our focus is primarily on the diamond model, in which the polymers traverse a recursively defined diamond graph with a random environment composed of random variables indexed by the vertex set. The diamond graphs are constructed iteratively according to a given branching parameter b ∈ {2, 3, 4, . . .} and segmenting parameter s ∈ {2, 3, 4, . . .}, and our main result concerns the critical case b = s. In this case, we prove a distributional limit theorem for the partition function in a limiting regime, where the growth of the system is counterbalanced with an appropriate scaling of the coupling strength of the polymer to the random environment. For context, we also provide discussion of a similar distributional limit theorem in the subcritical b < s case. This extends recent work in the critical case of analogous models where disorder variables are placed at the edges of the graphs rather than the vertices.

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.