A first order localization/delocalization transition in charged polymers
We study a quenched charged-polymer model, introduced by Garel and Orland in 1988, that reproduces the folding/unfolding transition of biopolymers. We prove that, below the critical inverse temperature, the polymer is delocalized in the sense that: (1) The rescaled trajectory of the polymer converges to the Brownian path; and (2) The partition function remains bounded. At the critical inverse temperature, we show that the maximum time spent at points jumps discontinuously from 0 to a...