The Critical 2d Stochastic Heat Flow

We consider directed polymers in random environment in the critical dimension $d = 2$, focusing on the intermediate disorder regime when the model undergoes a phase transition. We prove that, at criticality, the diffusively rescaled random field of partition functions has a unique scaling limit: a universal process of random measures on $\mathbb{R}^2$ with logarithmic correlations, which we call the *Critical 2d Stochastic Heat Flow*. It is the natural candidate for the long sought solution of the critical 2d Stochastic Heat Equation with multiplicative space-time white noise.
Comment: Minor revisions. To appear in Inventiones mathematicae