Student Workshop Integrability 2023

We consider the four-vertex model, which is a special case of the six-vertex model in which two vertices are set to zero. Under specific choices of fixed boundary conditions, this model exhibits spatial phase separation, between frozen and disordered regions, sharply separated by a smooth curve, known as arctic curve. The most interesting aspect of the four-vertex model is that, even though it is interacting, it is still exactly solvable in a relatively simple way. Here we use the Tangent Method, which is an exact, although heuristic method, to compute the arctic curve.