Branched Polymers

Abstract

Building on and from the work of Brydges and Imbrie, we give an elementary calculation of the volume of the space of branched polymers of order $n$ in the plane and in 3-space. Our development reveals some more general identities, and allows exact random sampling. In particular we show that a random 3-dimensional branched polymer of order $n$ has diameter of order $\sqrt{n}$.