An exact solution of two friendly interacting directed walks near a sticky wall

We find the exact solution of two interacting friendly directed walks (modelling polymers) on the square lattice. These walks are confined to the quarter plane by a horizontal attractive surface, to capture the effects of DNA-denaturation and adsorption. We find the solution to the model’s corresponding generating function by means of the obstinate kernel method. Specifically, we apply this technique in two different instances to establish partial solutions for two simplified generating functions of the same underlying model that ignore either surface or shared contacts. We then subsequently combine our two partial solutions to find the solution for the full generating function in terms of the two simpler variants. This expression guides our analysis of the model, where we find the system exhibits four phases, and proceed to delineate the full phase diagram, showing that all observed phase transitions are second-order. PACS numbers: 05.50.+q, 05.70.fh, 61.41.+e