B. Derrida et al., MEAN-FIELD THEORY OF DIRECTED POLYMERS WITH RANDOM COMPLEX WEIGHTS, Communications in Mathematical Physics, 156(2), 1993, pp. 221-244
We show that for the problem of directed polymers on a tree with i.i.d
. random complex weights on each bond, three possible phases can exist
; the phase of a particular system is determined by the distribution r
ho of the random weights. For each of these three phases, we give the
expression of the free energy per unit length in the limit of infinite
ly long polymers. Our proofs require several hypotheses on the distrib
ution rho, most importantly, that the amplitude and the phase of each
complex weight be statistically independent. The main steps of our pro
ofs use bounds on noninteger moments of the partition function and sel
f averaging properties of the free energy. We illustrate our results b
y some examples and discuss possible generalizations to a larger class
of distributions, to Random Energy Models, and to the finite dimensio
nal case. We note that our results are not in agreement with the predi
ctions of a recent replica approach to a similar problem.