Winding angle variance of Fortuin-Kasteleyn contours.

Abstract

The variance in the winding number of various random fractal curves, including the self-avoiding walk, the loop-erased random walk, contours of Fortuin-Kastelyn clusters, and stochastic Loewner evolution, has been studied by numerous researchers. Usually the focus has been on the winding at the end points. We measure the variance in winding number at typical points along the curve. More generally, we study the winding at points where k strands come together, and some adjacent strands may be conditioned not to hit each other. The measured values are consistent with an interesting conjecture.