Airy process at a thin rough region between frozen and smooth

Abstract

We show there is a last path at the rough smooth boundary of the two-periodic Aztec diamond with parameter $a\in (0,1)$ that, suitably rescaled, converges to the Airy process, under the condition that $a$ tends to zero as the size of the Aztec diamond tends to infinity at a certain rate. This condition causes the rough region to have a thin, mesoscopic width. We also show that the dimers are described by a discrete Bessel kernel when the width is only of microscopic size.