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Renormalisation group determination of the order of the DNA denaturation transition

We report on the nature of the thermal denaturation transition of homogeneous DNA as determined from a renormalisation group analysis of the Peyrard-Bishop-Dauxois model. Our approach is based on an analogy with the phenomenon of critical wetting that goes further than previous qualitative comparisons, and shows that the transition is continuous for the average base-pair separation. However, since the range of universal critical behaviour appears to be very narrow, numerically observed denaturation transitions may look first-order, as it has been reported in the literature.