The free energy of matrix models

Félix Parraud, Kevin Schnelli

Published 2023-10-19Version 1

In this paper we study multi-matrix models whose potentials are small perturbations of the quadratic potential associated with independent GUE random matrices. More precisely, we compute the free energy and the expectation of the trace of polynomials evaluated in those matrices. We prove an asymptotic expansion in the inverse of the matrix dimension to any order. Out of this result we deduce new formulas for map enumeration and the microstates free entropy. The approach that we take is based on the interpolation method between random matrices and free operators developed in [8,29].