2000/04/10 by V. T. Petaja, Viljo Petäjä, Mikko J. Alava +3 · 3 citations
Chemistry · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Physical and Chemical Molecular Interactions #Composite material #Ground state #Material Dynamics and Properties #Materials science #Physics #Polymer #Quantum mechanics #Statistical physics #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1142/s012918310100181x
published in International Journal of Modern Physics C 12(03), 421-436 (World Scientific) · 19 pages RevTeX, figures included
arxiv created 2000/04/10 · openalex publication_date 2001/03/01 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Joint ground states of two directed polymers in a random medium are investigated. Using exact min-cost flow optimization, the true two-line ground-state is compared with the single line ground state plus its first excited state with "worst-possible" initial conditions, where the two lines start next to each other. It is found that these two-line configurations are (for almost all disorder configurations) distinct implying that the true two-line ground-state is nonseparable, which means that the two-line ground state cannot be obtained by adding a second line to the first line in the one-line ground state without deforming the first line. The effective interaction energy between the two lines scales with the system size with the scaling exponents 0.39 ± 0.03 and 0.21 ± 0.02 in 2D and 3D, respectively.