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Coincidence of critical points for directed polymers for general environments and random walks

Stefan Junk and Hubert Lacoin

Vol. 3 (2026), No. 1, 89–125
Abstract

For the directed polymer in a random environment (DPRE), two critical inverse-temperatures can be defined. The first one, βc, separates the strong disorder regime (in which the normalized partition function Wnβ tends to zero) from the weak disorder regime (in which Wnβ converges to a nontrivial limit). The other, β¯c, delimits the very strong disorder regime (in which Wnβ converges to zero exponentially fast). It was proved in earlier work that βc = β¯c when the random environment is bounded above for the DPRE based on the simple random walk. We extend this result to general environments and an arbitrary reference walk. We also prove that βc = 0 if and only if the L2 critical point is trivial.

Keywords
disordered models, directed polymers, strong disorder
Mathematical Subject Classification
Primary: 60K35, 60K37, 82B26, 82B27, 82B44
Milestones
Received: 13 February 2025
Revised: 9 December 2025
Accepted: 9 December 2025
Published: 9 April 2026
Authors
Stefan Junk
Gakushuin University
Tokyo
Japan
Hubert Lacoin
Instituto de Matemática Pura e Aplicada
Rio de Janeiro
Brazil