Non-probabilistic fermionic limit shapes

We study a translational invariant free fermions model in imaginary time, with nearest neighbor and next-nearest neighbor hopping terms, for a class of inhomogeneous boundary conditions. This model is known to give rise to limit shapes and arctic curves, in the absence of the next-nearest neighbor perturbation. The perturbation considered turns out to not be always positive, that is, the corresponding statistical mechanical model does not always have positive Boltzmann weights. We investigate how the density profile is affected by this nonpositive perturbation. We find that in some regions, the effects of the negative signs are suppressed, and renormalize to zero. However, depending on boundary conditions, new "crazy regions" emerge, in which minus signs proliferate, and the density of fermions is not in $[0,1]$ anymore. We provide a simple intuition for such behavior, and compute exactly the density profile both on the lattice and in the scaling limit.
Comment: 23 pages, 8 figures. v2: minor improvements