New renormalization group results for scaling of self-avoiding tethered membranes

The scaling properties of self-avoiding polymerized two-dimensional membranes are studied via renormalization group methods based on a multilocal operator product expansion. The renormalization group functions are calculated to second order. This yields the scaling exponent nu to order epsilon(2). Our extrapolations for nu agree with the Gaussian variational estimate for large space dimension d and are close to the Flory estimate for d = 3. The interplay between self-avoidance and rigidity at small d is briefly discussed.