Adsorbed self-avoiding walks pulled at an interior vertex

Abstract

We consider self-avoiding walks terminally attached to a surface at which they can adsorb. A force is applied, normal to the surface, to desorb the walk and we investigate how the behaviour depends on the vertex of the walk at which the force is applied. We use rigorous arguments to map out some features of the phase diagram, including bounds on the locations of some phase boundaries, and we use Monte Carlo methods to make quantitative predictions about the locations of these boundaries and the nature of the various phase transitions.