Flory Exponents from a Self-Consistent Renormalization Group

Abstract

The wandering exponent $ν$ for an isotropic polymer is predicted remarkably well by a simple argument due to Flory. By considering oriented polymers living in a one-parameter family of background tangent fields, we are able to relate the wandering exponent to the exponent in the background field through an $ε$-expansion. We then choose the background field to have the same correlations as the individual polymer, thus self-consistently solving for $ν$. We find $ν=3/(d+2)$ for $d<4$ and $ν=1/2$ for $d\ge 4$, which is exactly the Flory result.