Localisation and delocalisation of the integer-valued membrane model

Abstract

We study the integer-valued membrane model on boxes $[-L,L]^d\cap\mathbb{Z}^d$ with zero boundary conditions. We show that in dimension two the model is delocalised at sufficiently high temperature. More precisely, the variance at the origin is of order $L^2/β$, where $β$ is the inverse temperature. More generally, for every $ε>0$ and all sufficiently small $β>0$, the logarithm of each Laplace transform lies between $(1+ε)^{-1}$ and $1$ times its Gaussian counterpart. The temperature threshold is independent of $L$ and the test function. In dimensions three and four, we prove that the variance at the origin is bounded uniformly in the box size at every positive inverse temperature. Thus the integer constraint changes the order of fluctuations in these dimensions. The proofs use a modification of the Fröhlich--Spencer argument in dimension two and a comparison with integer-valued Gaussian free fields in higher dimensions.