Planar Ising model at criticality: state-of-the-art and perspectives

In this essay, we briefly discuss recent developments, started a decade ago in the seminal work of Smirnov and continued by a number of authors, centered around the conformal invariance of the critical planar Ising model on $\mathbb{Z}^2$ and, more generally, of the critical Z-invariant Ising model on isoradial graphs (rhombic lattices). We also introduce a new class of embeddings of general weighted planar graphs (s-embeddings), which might, in particular, pave the way to true universality results for the planar Ising model.Comment: 19 pages (+ references), prepared for the Proceedings of ICM2018. Second version: two references added, a few misprints fixe

Spanning Trees on Graphs and Lattices in d Dimensions

The problem of enumerating spanning trees on graphs and lattices is considered. We obtain bounds on the number of spanning trees $N_{ST}$ and establish inequalities relating the numbers of spanning trees of different graphs or lattices. A general formulation is presented for the enumeration of spanning trees on lattices in $d\geq 2$ dimensions, and is applied to the hypercubic, body-centered cubic, face-centered cubic, and specific planar lattices including the kagom\'e, diced, 4-8-8 (bathroom-tile), Union Jack, and 3-12-12 lattices. This leads to closed-form expressions for $N_{ST}$ for these lattices of finite sizes. We prove a theorem concerning the classes of graphs and lattices ${\cal L}$ with the property that $N_{ST} \sim \exp(nz_{\cal L})$ as the number of vertices $n \to \infty$, where $z_{\cal L}$ is a finite nonzero constant. This includes the bulk limit of lattices in any spatial dimension, and also sections of lattices whose lengths in some dimensions go to infinity while others are finite. We evaluate $z_{\cal L}$ exactly for the lattices we considered, and discuss the dependence of $z_{\cal L}$ on d and the lattice coordination number. We also establish a relation connecting $z_{\cal L}$ to the free energy of the critical Ising model for planar lattices ${\cal L}$.Comment: 28 pages, latex, 1 postscript figure, J. Phys. A, in pres

Universal Communication, Universal Graphs, and Graph Labeling

We introduce a communication model called universal SMP, in which Alice and Bob receive a function f belonging to a family ?, and inputs x and y. Alice and Bob use shared randomness to send a message to a third party who cannot see f, x, y, or the shared randomness, and must decide f(x,y). Our main application of universal SMP is to relate communication complexity to graph labeling, where the goal is to give a short label to each vertex in a graph, so that adjacency or other functions of two vertices x and y can be determined from the labels ?(x), ?(y). We give a universal SMP protocol using O(k^2) bits of communication for deciding whether two vertices have distance at most k in distributive lattices (generalizing the k-Hamming Distance problem in communication complexity), and explain how this implies a O(k^2 log n) labeling scheme for deciding dist(x,y) ? k on distributive lattices with size n; in contrast, we show that a universal SMP protocol for determining dist(x,y) ? 2 in modular lattices (a superset of distributive lattices) has super-constant ?(n^{1/4}) communication cost. On the other hand, we demonstrate that many graph families known to have efficient adjacency labeling schemes, such as trees, low-arboricity graphs, and planar graphs, admit constant-cost communication protocols for adjacency. Trees also have an O(k) protocol for deciding dist(x,y) ? k and planar graphs have an O(1) protocol for dist(x,y) ? 2, which implies a new O(log n) labeling scheme for the same problem on planar graphs

Distributive Lattices, Polyhedra, and Generalized Flow

A D-polyhedron is a polyhedron $P$ such that if $x,y$ are in $P$ then so are their componentwise max and min. In other words, the point set of a D-polyhedron forms a distributive lattice with the dominance order. We provide a full characterization of the bounding hyperplanes of D-polyhedra. Aside from being a nice combination of geometric and order theoretic concepts, D-polyhedra are a unifying generalization of several distributive lattices which arise from graphs. In fact every D-polyhedron corresponds to a directed graph with arc-parameters, such that every point in the polyhedron corresponds to a vertex potential on the graph. Alternatively, an edge-based description of the point set can be given. The objects in this model are dual to generalized flows, i.e., dual to flows with gains and losses. These models can be specialized to yield some cases of distributive lattices that have been studied previously. Particular specializations are: lattices of flows of planar digraphs (Khuller, Naor and Klein), of $\alpha$-orientations of planar graphs (Felsner), of c-orientations (Propp) and of $\Delta$-bonds of digraphs (Felsner and Knauer). As an additional application we exhibit a distributive lattice structure on generalized flow of breakeven planar digraphs.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figure

Randomness in topological models

p. 914-925There are two aspects of randomness in topological models. In the first one, topological idealization of random patterns found in the Nature can be regarded as planar representations of three-dimensional lattices and thus reconstructed in the space. Another aspect of randomness is related to graphs in which some properties are determined in a random way. For example, combinatorial properties of graphs: number of vertices, number of edges, and connections between them can be regarded as events in the defined probability space. Random-graph theory deals with a question: at what connection probability a particular property reveals. Combination of probabilistic description of planar graphs and their spatial reconstruction creates new opportunities in structural form-finding, especially in the inceptive, the most creative, stage.Tarczewski, R.; Bober, W. (2010). Randomness in topological models. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/695

Fat Fisher Zeroes

We show that it is possible to determine the locus of Fisher zeroes in the thermodynamic limit for the Ising model on planar (``fat'') phi4 random graphs and their dual quadrangulations by matching up the real part of the high and low temperature branches of the expression for the free energy. The form of this expression for the free energy also means that series expansion results for the zeroes may be obtained with rather less effort than might appear necessary at first sight by simply reverting the series expansion of a function g(z) which appears in the solution and taking a logarithm. Unlike regular 2D lattices where numerous unphysical critical points exist with non-standard exponents, the Ising model on planar phi4 graphs displays only the physical transition at c = exp (- 2 beta) = 1/4 and a mirror transition at c=-1/4 both with KPZ/DDK exponents (alpha = -1, beta = 1/2, gamma = 2). The relation between the phi4 locus and that of the dual quadrangulations is akin to that between the (regular) triangular and honeycomb lattices since there is no self-duality.Comment: 12 pages + 6 eps figure

Fat Fisher Zeroes

We show that it is possible to determine the locus of Fisher zeroes in the thermodynamic limit for the Ising model on planar (``fat'') phi4 random graphs and their dual quadrangulations by matching up the real part of the high and low temperature branches of the expression for the free energy. The form of this expression for the free energy also means that series expansion results for the zeroes may be obtained with rather less effort than might appear necessary at first sight by simply reverting the series expansion of a function g(z) which appears in the solution and taking a logarithm. Unlike regular 2D lattices where numerous unphysical critical points exist with non-standard exponents, the Ising model on planar phi4 graphs displays only the physical transition at c = exp (- 2 beta) = 1/4 and a mirror transition at c=-1/4 both with KPZ/DDK exponents (alpha = -1, beta = 1/2, gamma = 2). The relation between the phi4 locus and that of the dual quadrangulations is akin to that between the (regular) triangular and honeycomb lattices since there is no self-duality.Comment: 12 pages + 6 eps figure