Renormalisation group determination of the order of the DNA denaturation transition

¹  Departamento de Física Atómica, Molecular y Nuclear, Universidad de Sevilla - Apartado de correos 1065, 41080 Seville, Spain, EU
²  Departamento de Electromagnetismo y Física de la Materia, Universidad de Granada - Fuentenueva s/n, 18071 Granada, Spain, EU
³  Instituto Carlos I de Física Teórica y Computacional, Universidad de Granada - Fuentenueva s/n, 18071 Granada, Spain, EU

Received: 3 November 2009
Accepted: 12 February 2010

Abstract

We report on the nature of the thermal-denaturation transition of homogeneous DNA as determined from a renormalisation group analysis of the Peyrard-Bishop-Dauxois model. Our approach is based on an analogy with the phenomenon of critical wetting that goes further than previous qualitative comparisons, and shows that the transition is continuous for the average base-pair separation. However, since the range of universal critical behaviour appears to be very narrow, numerically observed denaturation transitions may look first-order, as it has been reported in the literature.