Transition from the compact to the dense phase of two-dimensional polymers

Abstract

We present a unifying picture of the compact, dense and dilute phases of two-dimensional polymers. The lattice dependence of the scaling exponents for compact polymers is reconciled with their universality in the dense and dilute case. In particular, we show that violations of the fully-packing constraint in the compact phase can be interpreted as magnetic screening in the associated Coulomb gas, which induces a flow to either the dense or the dilute phase. When more than one flavour of polymers is present the flow away from the compact phase leads to a decoupling of the flavours, and the central charge decreases by an integer. If charge asymmetry develops the polymer flavours may independently flow to either of the two non-compact phases.