Mixing time of critical Ising model on trees is polynomial in the height

TL;DR

This paper proves that the mixing time of the critical Ising model on regular trees grows polynomially with the height, completing the understanding of spectral gap behavior at criticality for this geometry.

Contribution

It establishes that the inverse-gap for the Ising model on b-ary trees is polynomial in the height at criticality, independent of boundary conditions and tree branching.

Findings

Inverse-gap is polynomial in height at criticality

Results hold under any boundary condition

Near critical behavior shows exponential dependence on height

Abstract

In the heat-bath Glauber dynamics for the Ising model on the lattice, physicists believe that the spectral gap of the continuous-time chain exhibits the following behavior. For some critical inverse-temperature $\beta_c$, the inverse-gap is bounded for $\beta < \beta_c$, polynomial in the surface area for $\beta = \beta_c$ and exponential in it for $\beta > \beta_c$. This has been proved for $\Z^2$ except at criticality. So far, the only underlying geometry where the critical behavior has been confirmed is the complete graph. Recently, the dynamics for the Ising model on a regular tree, also known as the Bethe lattice, has been intensively studied. The facts that the inverse-gap is bounded for $\beta < \beta_c$ and exponential for $\beta > \beta_c$ were established, where $\beta_c$ is the critical spin-glass parameter, and the tree-height $h$ plays the role of the surface area. In this work, we complete the picture for the inverse-gap of the Ising model on the $b$-ary tree, by showing that it is indeed polynomial in $h$ at criticality. The degree of our polynomial bound does not depend on $b$, and furthermore, this result holds under any boundary condition. We also obtain analogous bounds for the mixing-time of the chain. In addition, we study the near critical behavior, and show that for $\beta > \beta_c$, the inverse-gap and mixing-time are both $\exp[\Theta((\beta-\beta_c) h)]$.