Self-Consistent Theory of Polymerized Membranes

Abstract

We study $D$-dimensional polymerized membranes embedded in $d$ dimensions using a self-consistent screening approximation. It is exact for large $d$ to order $1/d$, for any $d$ to order $ε=4-D$ and for $d=D$. For flat physical membranes ($D=2,d=3$) it predicts a roughness exponent $ζ=0.590$. For phantom membranes at the crumpling transition the size exponent is $ν=0.732$. It yields identical lower critical dimension for the flat phase and crumpling transition $D_{lc}(d)={2 d \over {d+1}}$ ($D_{lc}={\sqrt{2}}$ for codimension 1). For physical membranes with ${\it random}$ quenched curvature $ζ=0.775$ in the new $T=0$ flat phase in good agreement with simulations.

12 pages, Latex, figures available on request, radz@cmts.harvard.edu