Connective constant

In mathematics, the connective constant is a numerical quantity associated with self-avoiding walks on a lattice. It is studied in connection with the notion of universality in two-dimensional statistical physics models. While the connective constant depends on the choice of lattice so itself is not universal (similarly to other lattice-dependent quantities such as the critical probability threshold for percolation), it is nonetheless an important quantity that appears in conjectures for universal laws. Furthermore, the mathematical techniques used to understand the connective constant, for example in the recent rigorous proof by Duminil-Copin and Smirnov that the connective constant of the hexagonal lattice has the precise value 2 + 2 {\displaystyle {\sqrt {2+{\sqrt {2}}}}} , may provide clues to a possible approach for attacking other important open problems in the study of self-avoiding walks, notably the conjecture that self-avoiding walks converge in the scaling limit to the Schramm–Loewner evolution.