On the Long-Range Directed Polymer Model

Abstract

We study the long-range directed polymer model on $\mathbbm {Z}$ in a random environment, where the underlying random walk lies in the domain of attraction of an $\alpha$-stable process for some $\alpha \in (0,2]$. Similar to the more classic nearest-neighbor directed polymer model, as the inverse temperature $\beta$ increases, the model undergoes a transition from a weak disorder regime to a strong disorder regime. We extend most of the important results known for the nearest-neighbor directed polymer model on $\mathbbm {Z}^d$ to the long-range model on $\mathbbm {Z}$. More precisely, we show that in the entire weak disorder regime, the polymer satisfies an analogue of invariance principle, while in the so-called very strong disorder regime, the polymer end point distribution contains macroscopic atoms and under some mild conditions, the polymer has a super-$\alpha$-stable motion. Furthermore, for $\alpha \in (1,2]$, we show that the model is in the very strong disorder regime whenever $\beta >0$, and we give explicit bounds on the free energy.