No Arabic abstract
We define a potential-weighted connective constant that measures the effective strength of a repulsive pair potential of a Gibbs point process modulated by the geometry of the underlying space. We then show that this definition leads to improved bounds for Gibbs uniqueness for all non-trivial repulsive pair potentials on $mathbb R^d$ and other metric measure spaces. We do this by constructing a tree-branching collection of densities associated to the point process that captures the interplay between the potential and the geometry of the space. When the activity is small as a function of the potential-weighted connective constant this object exhibits an infinite volume uniqueness property. On the other hand, we show that our uniqueness bound can be tight for certain spaces: the same infinite volume object exhibits non-uniqueness for activities above our bound in the case when the underlying space has the geometry of a tree.
The connective constant $mu(G)$ of a quasi-transitive graph $G$ is the asymptotic growth rate of the number of self-avoiding walks (SAWs) on $G$ from a given starting vertex. We survey several aspects of the relationship between the connective constant and the underlying graph $G$. $bullet$ We present upper and lower bounds for $mu$ in terms of the vertex-degree and girth of a transitive graph. $bullet$ We discuss the question of whether $mugephi$ for transitive cubic graphs (where $phi$ denotes the golden mean), and we introduce the Fisher transformation for SAWs (that is, the replacement of vertices by triangles). $bullet$ We present strict inequalities for the connective constants $mu(G)$ of transitive graphs $G$, as $G$ varies. $bullet$ As a consequence of the last, the connective constant of a Cayley graph of a finitely generated group decreases strictly when a new relator is added, and increases strictly when a non-trivial group element is declared to be a further generator. $bullet$ We describe so-called graph height functions within an account of bridges for quasi-transitive graphs, and indicate that the bridge constant equals the connective constant when the graph has a unimodular graph height function. $bullet$ A partial answer is given to the question of the locality of connective constants, based around the existence of unimodular graph height functions. $bullet$ Examples are presented of Cayley graphs of finitely presented groups that possess graph height functions (that are, in addition, harmonic and unimodular), and that do not. $bullet$ The review closes with a brief account of the speed of SAW.
We show that nontrivial bi-infinite polymer Gibbs measures do not exist in typical environments in the inverse-gamma (or log-gamma) directed polymer model on the planar square lattice. The precise technical result is that, except for measures supported on straight-line paths, such Gibbs measures do not exist in almost every environment when the weights are independent and identically distributed inverse-gamma random variables. The proof proceeds by showing that when two endpoints of a point-to-point polymer distribution are taken to infinity in opposite directions but not parallel to lattice directions, the midpoint of the polymer path escapes. The proof is based on couplings, planar comparison arguments, and a recently discovered joint distribution of Busemann functions.
We formulate a continuous version of the well known discrete hardcore (or independent set) model on a locally finite graph, parameterized by the so-called activity parameter $lambda > 0$. In this version, the state or spin value $x_u$ of any node $u$ of the graph lies in the interval $[0,1]$, the hardcore constraint $x_u + x_v leq 1$ is satisfied for every edge $(u,v)$ of the graph, and the space of feasible configurations is given by a convex polytope. When the graph is a regular tree, we show that there is a unique Gibbs measure associated to each activity parameter $lambda>0$. Our result shows that, in contrast to the standard discrete hardcore model, the continuous hardcore model does not exhibit a phase transition on the infinite regular tree. We also consider a family of continuous models that interpolate between the discrete and continuous hardcore models on a regular tree when $lambda = 1$ and show that each member of the family has a unique Gibbs measure, even when the discrete model does not. In each case, the proof entails the analysis of an associated Hamiltonian dynamical system that describes a certain limit of the marginal distribution at a node. Furthermore, given any sequence of regular graphs with fixed degree and girth diverging to infinity, we apply our results to compute the asymptotic limit of suitably normalized volumes of the corresponding sequence of convex polytopes of feasible configurations. In particular, this yields an approximation for the partition function of the continuous hard core model on a regular graph with large girth in the case $lambda = 1$.
We present a general method to derive continuity estimates for conditional probabilities of general (possibly continuous) spin models sub jected to local transformations. Such systems arise in the study of a stochastic time-evolution of Gibbs measures or as noisy observations. We exhibit the minimal necessary structure for such double-layer systems. Assuming no a priori metric on the local state spaces, we define the posterior metric on the local image space. We show that it allows in a natural way to divide the local part of the continuity estimates from the spatial part (which is treated by Dobrushin uniqueness here). We show in the concrete example of the time evolution of rotators on the q-1 dimensional sphere how this method can be used to obtain estimates in terms of the familiar Euclidean metric.
We consider statistical mechanics models of continuous spins in a disordered environment. These models have a natural interpretation as effective interface models. It is well known that without disorder there are no interface Gibbs measures in infinite volume in dimension $d=2$, while there are ``gradient Gibbs measures describing an infinite-volume distribution for the increments of the field, as was shown by Funaki and Spohn. In the present paper we show that adding a disorder term prohibits the existence of such gradient Gibbs measures for general interaction potentials in $d=2$. This nonexistence result generalizes the simple case of Gaussian fields where it follows from an explicit computation. In $d=3$ where random gradient Gibbs measures are expected to exist, our method provides a lower bound of the order of the inverse of the distance on the decay of correlations of Gibbs expectations w.r.t. the distribution of the random environment.