Exact Partition Functions of Interacting Self-Avoiding Walks on Lattices

Ideas and methods of statistical physics have been shown to be useful for understanding some interesting problems in physical systems, e.g. universality and scaling in critical systems. The interacting self-avoiding walk (ISAW) on a lattice is the simplest model for homopolymers and serves as the framework of simple models for biopolymers, such as DNA, RNA, and protein, which are important components in complex systems in biology. In this paper, we briefly review our recent work on exact partition functions of ISAW. Based on zeros of these exact partition functions, we have developed a novel method in which both loci of zeros and thermodynamic functions associated with them are considered. With this method, the first zeros can be identified clearly without ambiguity. The critical point of a small system can then be defined as the peak position of the heat capacity component associated with the first zeros. For the system with two phase transitions, two pairs of first zeros corresponding to two phase transitions can be identified and overlapping C υ can be well separated. ISAW on the simple cubic lattice is such a system where in addition to a standard collapse transition, there is another freezing transition occurring at a lower temperature. Our approach can give a clear scenario for the collapse and the freezing transitions.