Tricriticality and Reentrance in a Naive Spin-Glass Model

In this paper a spin-1 spin-glass model under the presence of a uniform crystal field is investigated. It is shown that the model presents both continuous and first-order phase transition separated by a tricritical point. The phase diagram is obtained within the replica-symmetric solution and exhibits reentrance phenomena at low temperatures. Possibly it is the simplest model which can describe inverse freezing phenomena.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figur

Combinatorial formulation of Ising model revisited

In 1952, Kac and Ward developed a combinatorial formulation for the two dimensional Ising model which is another method of obtaining Onsager's formula for the free energy per site in the thermodynamic limit of the model. Feynman gave an important contribution to this formulation conjecturing a crucial mathematical relation which completed Kac and Ward ideas. In this paper, the method of Kac, Ward and Feynman for the free field Ising model in two dimensions is reviewed in a selfcontained way.Comment: 27 pages, 17 figure