Two-dimensional interacting self-avoiding walks: new estimates for critical temperatures and exponents

We investigate, by series methods, the behaviour of interacting self-avoiding walks (ISAWs) on the honeycomb lattice and on the square lattice. This is the first such investigation of ISAWs on the honeycomb lattice. We have generated data for ISAWs up to 75 steps on this lattice, and 55 steps on the square lattice. For the hexagonal lattice we find the θ-point to be at u _c = 2.767 ± 0.002. The honeycomb lattice is unique among the regular two-dimensional lattices in that the exact growth constant is known for non-interacting walks, and is $\sqrt{2+\sqrt{2}}$ (Duminil-Copin H and Smirnov S 2014 Ann. Math. 175 1653–65), while for half-plane walks interacting with a surface, the critical fugacity, again for the honeycomb lattice, is $1+\sqrt{2}$ (Beaton N R et al 2014 Commun. Math. Phys. 326 727–54). We could not help but notice that $\sqrt{2+4\sqrt{2}}=2.767\dots .$ We discuss the difficulties of trying to prove, or disprove, this possibility. For square lattice ISAWs we find u _c = 1.9474 ± 0.001, which is consistent with the best Monte Carlo analysis. We also study bridges and terminally-attached walks (TAWs) on the square lattice at the θ-point. We estimate the exponents to be γ _b = 0.00 ± 0.03, and γ ₁ = 0.55 ± 0.03 respectively. The latter result is consistent with the prediction (Duplantier B and Saleur H 1987 Phys. Rev. Lett. 59 539–42; Seno F and Stella A L 1988 Europhys. Lett. 7 605–10; Stella A L et al 1993 J. Stat. Phys. 73 21–46) ${\gamma }_1\left(\theta \right)=\nu =\frac{4}{7}$, albeit for a modified version of the problem, while the former estimate is predicted in [Duplantier B and Guttmann A J 2019 Statistical mechanics of confined polymer networks (in preparation)] to be zero. (paper)