Past exam of the quantum condensed matter course of the University of Cambridge / 2008 / Section A / A4 / a

Take the same segment length and a large common number of steps. The ideal walks have size proportional to $N^{1/2}$; excluded volume swells a three-dimensional chain to approximately $N^{0.59}$ and a two-dimensional chain to $N^{3/4}$. Projection changes an isotropic walk's prefactor, rather than its exponent. The projected three-dimensional ideal walk has a smaller planar size than an otherwise equal two-dimensional ideal walk. Therefore the asymptotic ordering isThe following subparts make the size and projection factors explicit. Comparing root-mean-square sizes gives the same ordering as comparing mean distance magnitudes here.

For the planar random walk with independent steps of length $b$, cross terms vanish and $⟨R^2⟩=N{b}^2$. Thus $R_{\mathrm{rms}}=b{N}^{1/2}$. At large $N$, the planar Gaussian end distribution gives $⟨R⟩\simeq b\sqrt{\pi N}/2$.

A planar self-avoiding walk cannot revisit its occupied sites. In the good-solvent scaling regime, the two-dimensional Flory approximation gives $R\sim b{N}^{3/4}$, larger at large $N$ than either ideal walk and the projected three-dimensional self-avoiding walk. This is a scaling statement, with microscopic prefactors dependent on the walk model.

For an isotropic three-dimensional ideal walk, each Cartesian component contributes $N{b}^2/3$ to the mean square. Keeping two components gives $⟨R_{\mathrm{proj}}^2⟩=2N{b}^2/3$. The planar projection of an isotropic random vector therefore has $R_{\mathrm{proj},\mathrm{rms}}=b\sqrt{2N/3}$, smaller than the unprojected planar ideal walk by $\sqrt{2/3}$. The corresponding two-dimensional Gaussian mean distance has the same ratio.

A three-dimensional self-avoiding walk has swollen size $R\sim b{N}^{\nu }$, with $\nu \simeq 0.59$; the three-dimensional Flory approximation gives the nearby estimate $3/5$. Isotropic projection gives $⟨R_{\mathrm{proj}}^2⟩=(2/3)⟨R^2⟩$, preserving this exponent. For the mean distance rather than its root mean square, the orientation average instead gives $⟨R_{\mathrm{proj}}⟩=(\pi /4)⟨R⟩$. Neither prefactor changes its position between the ideal $N^{1/2}$ walks and the planar swollen $N^{3/4}$ walk.