Pinning and disorder relevance for the lattice Gaussian Free Field II: the two dimensional case

Abstract

This paper continues a study initiated in [34], on the localization transition of a lattice free field on $\mathbb Z^d$ interacting with a quenched disordered substrate that acts on the interface when its height is close to zero. The substrate has the tendency to localize or repel the interface at different sites. A transition takes place when the average pinning potential $h$ goes past a threshold $h_c$: from a delocalized phase $h<h_c$, where the field is macroscopically repelled by the substrate to a localized one $h>h_c$ where the field sticks to the substrate. Our goal is to investigate the effect of the presence of disorder on this phase transition. We focus on the two dimensional case $(d=2)$ for which we had obtained so far only limited results. We prove that the value of $h_c(\beta)$ is the same as for the annealed model, for all values of $\beta$ and that in a neighborhood of $h_c$. Moreover we prove that in contrast with the case $d\ge 3$ where the free energy has a quadratic behavior near the critical point, the phase transition is of infinite order $$\lim_{u\to 0+} \frac{ \log \mathrm{F}(\beta,h_c(\beta)+u)}{(\log u)}= \infty.$$