Transition from the Compact to the Dense Phase of Two-Dimensional Polymers

We present a unifying picture of the compact, dense, and dilute phases of two-dimensional polymers. The lattice dependence of the scaling exponents for compact polymers is reconciled with their universality in the dense and dilute cases. In particular, we show that violations of the fully packing constraint in the compact phase can be interpreted as magnetic screening in the associated Coulomb gas, which induces a flow to either the dense or the dilute phase. When more than one flavor of polymers is present the flow away from the compact phase leads to a decoupling of the flavors, and the central charge decreases by an integer. If charge asymmetry develops, the polymer flavors may independently flow to either of the two noncompact phases.