Tracy-Widom fluctuations for perturbations of the log-gamma polymer in intermediate disorder

TL;DR

This paper proves that the free-energy fluctuations of the log-gamma polymer in the intermediate disorder regime follow Tracy-Widom distribution, extending previous results and confirming a key conjecture about fluctuation scales.

Contribution

It extends Tracy-Widom fluctuation results for the log-gamma polymer into the intermediate disorder regime and introduces a perturbation method for similar polymers.

Findings

Tracy-Widom fluctuations are confirmed in the intermediate disorder regime.

The fluctuation scale of the log-gamma polymer is identified.

A perturbation argument shows other polymers with matching moments also have Tracy-Widom fluctuations.

Abstract

The free-energy fluctuations of the discrete directed polymer in 1+1 dimensions is conjecturally in the Tracy-Widom universality class at all finite temperatures and in the intermediate disorder regime. Sepp\"al\"ainen's log-gamma polymer was proven to have GUE Tracy-Widom fluctuations in a restricted temperature range by Borodin et. al. (2013). We remove this restriction, and extend this result into the intermediate disorder regime. This result also identifies the scale of fluctuations of the log-gamma polymer in the intermediate disorder regime, and thus verifies a conjecture of Alberts et. al. (2010). Using a perturbation argument, we show that any polymer that matches a certain number of moments with the log-gamma polymer also has Tracy-Widom fluctuations in intermediate disorder.