Phase Transitions in Ising models: the Semi-infinite with decaying field and the Random Field Long-range

João Maia

Published 2024-03-07Version 1

In this thesis, we present results on phase transition for two models: the semi-infinite Ising model with a decaying field, and the long-range Ising model with a random field. We study the semi-infinite Ising model with an external field $h_i = \lambda |i_d|^{-\delta}$, $\lambda$ is the wall influence, and $\delta>0$. This external field decays as it gets further away from the wall. We are able to show that when $\delta>1$ and $\beta > \beta_c(d)$, there exists a critical value $0< \lambda_c:=\lambda_c(\delta,\beta)$ such that, for $\lambda<\lambda_c$ there is phase transition and for $\lambda>\lambda_c$ we have uniqueness of the Gibbs state. In addition, when $\delta<1$ we have only one Gibbs state for any positive $\beta$ and $\lambda$. For the model with a random field, we extend the recent argument by Ding and Zhuang from nearest-neighbor to long-range interactions and prove the phase transition in the class of ferromagnetic random field Ising models. Our proof combines a generalization of Fr\"ohlich-Spencer contours to the multidimensional setting proposed by Affonso, Bissacot, Endo and Handa, with the coarse-graining procedure introduced by Fisher, Fr\"ohlich, and Spencer. Our result shows that the Ding-Zhuang strategy is also useful for interactions $J_{xy}=|x-y|^{- \alpha}$ when $\alpha > d$ in dimension $d\geq 3$ if we have a suitable system of contours, yielding an alternative proof that does not use the Renormalization Group Method (RGM), since Bricmont and Kupiainen claimed that the RGM should also work on this generality. We can consider i.i.d. random fields with Gaussian or Bernoulli distributions.