Non-integrable dimer models: universality and scaling relations

In the last few years, the methods of constructive Fermionic Renormalization Group have been successfully applied to the study of the scaling limit of several two-dimensional statistical mechanics models at the critical point, including: weakly non-integrable 2D Ising models, Ashkin-Teller, 8-Vertex, and close-packed interacting dimer models. In this note, we will focus on the illustrative example of the interacting dimer model and review some of the universality results derived in this context. In particular, we will discuss the massless Gaussian free field (GFF) behavior of the height fluctuations. It turns out that GFF behavior is connected with a remarkable identity (`Haldane’ or ‘Kadanoff relation’) between an amplitude and an anomalous critical exponent, characterizing the large distance behavior of the dimer-dimer correlations.