Limit shapes for the asymmetric five vertex model

Abstract

We compute the free energy and surface tension function for the five-vertex model, a model of non-intersecting monotone lattice paths on the grid in which each corner gets a positive weight. We give a variational principle for limit shapes in this setting, and show that the resulting Euler-Lagrange equation can be integrated, giving explicit limit shapes parameterized by analytic functions.

37 pages, 21 figures