The tangent method has recently been devised by Colomo and Sportiello [12] as an efficient way to determine the shape of arctic curves. Largely conjectural, it has been tested successfully in a variety of models. However no proof and no general geometric insight have been given so far, either to show its validity or to allow for an understanding of why the method actually works. In this paper, we propose a universal framework which accounts for the tangency part of the tangent method, whenever a formulation in terms of directed lattice paths is available. Our analysis shows that the key factor responsible for the tangency property is the concavity of the entropy (also called the Lagrangean function) of long random lattice paths. We extend the proof of the tangency to q-deformed paths.

We use the tangent method to compute the arctic curve of the Twenty-Vertex (20V) model with particular domain wall boundary conditions for a wide set of integrable weights. To this end, we extend to the finite geometry of domain wall boundary conditions the standard connection between the bulk 20V and 6V models via the Kagome lattice ice model. This allows to express refined partition functions of the 20V model in terms of their 6V counterparts, leading to explicit parametric expressions for the various portions of its arctic curve. The latter displays a large variety of shapes depending on the weights and separates a central liquid phase from up to six different frozen phases. A number of numerical simulations are also presented, which highlight the arctic curve phenomenon and corroborate perfectly the analytic predictions of the tangent method. We finally compute the arctic curve of the Quarter-turn symmetric Holey Aztec Domino Tiling (QTHADT) model, a problem closely related to the 20V model and whose asymptotics may be analyzed via a similar tangent method approach. Again results for the QTHADT model are found to be in perfect agreement with our numerical simulations. CONTENTS

When applied to statistical systems showing an arctic curve phenomenon, the tangent method assumes that a modification of the most external path does not affect the arctic curve. We strengthen this statement and also make it more concrete by observing a factorization property: if Z n+k denotes a refined partition function of a system of n + k non-crossing paths, with the endpoints of the k most external paths possibly displaced, then at dominant order in n, it factorizes as where is the contribution of the k most external paths. Moreover if the shape of the arctic curve is known, we find that the asymptotic value of is fully computable in terms of the large deviation function L introduced in Debin et al (2019 J. Stat. Mech. 113107) (also called Lagrangean function). We present detailed verifications of the factorization in the Aztec diamond and for alternating sign matrices by using exact lattice results. Reversing the argument, we reformulate the tangent method in a way that no longer requires the extension of the domain, and which reveals the hidden role of the L function. As a by-product, the factorization property provides an efficient way to conjecture the asymptotics of multirefined partition functions.

In the paper [1], the authors study the arctic curve arising in random tilings of some planar domains with an arbitrary distribution of defects on one edge. Using the tangent method they derive a parametric equation for portions of arctic curve in terms of an arbitrary piecewise differentiable function that describes the defect distribution. When this distribution presents "freezing" intervals, other portions of arctic curve appear and typically have a cusp. These freezing boundaries can be of two types, respectively with maximal or minimal density of defects. Our purpose here is to extend the tangent method derivation of [1] to include these portions, hence providing the proof of the conjectures made in [1].

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