Critical behaviour of the bond-interacting self-avoiding walk

Abstract

The phase diagram for the bond-interacting self-avoiding walk is calculated using transfer matrices on finite strips. The model is shown to have a richer phase diagram than the related $\Theta$-point model. In addition to the standard collapse transition, we conjecture the existence of a line of transitions in the Berezinskii--Kosterlitz--Thouless (BKT) universality class, terminating in a critical end point. Our results are in contradiction with a previous transfer matrix calculation by Machado K D, de Oliveira M J and Stilck J F 2001 {\em Phys Rev E} {\bf 64} 051810.