Partial domain wall partition functions

Abstract

We consider six-vertex model configurations on an (n × N) lattice, n ≤ N, that satisfy a variation on domain wall boundary conditions that we define and call partial domain wall boundary conditions. We obtain two expressions for the corresponding partial domain wall partition function, as an (N× N)-determinant and as an (n×n)-determinant. The latter was first obtained by I Kostov. We show that the two determinants are equal, as expected from the fact that they are partition functions of the same object, that each is a discrete KP τ-function, and, recalling that these determinants represent tree-level structure constants in N = 4 SYM, we show that introducing 1-loop corrections, as proposed by N Gromov and P Vieira, preserves the determinant structure. © 2012 SISSA.