Glauber dynamics on nonamenable graphs: boundary conditions and mixing time. (English) Zbl 1187.82073

Bianchi, Alessandra

Electron. J. Probab. 13, 1980-2012 (2008).

Summary: We study the stochastic Ising model on finite graphs with \(n\) vertices and bounded degree and analyze the effect of boundary conditions on the mixing time. We show that for all low enough temperatures, the spectral gap of the dynamics with \((+)\)-boundary condition on a class of nonamenable graphs, is strictly positive uniformly in \(n\). This implies that the mixing time grows at most linearly in \(n\). The class of graphs we consider includes hyperbolic graphs with sufficiently high degree, where the best upper bound on the mixing time of the free boundary dynamics is polynomial in \(n\), with exponent growing with the inverse temperature. In addition, we construct a graph in this class, for which the mixing time in the free boundary case is exponentially large in \(n\). This provides a first example where the mixing time jumps from exponential to linear in \(n\) while passing from free to \((+)\)-boundary condition. These results extend the analysis of F. Martinelli, A. Sinclair and D. Weitz [Commun. Math. Phys. 250, No. 2, 301–334 (2004; Zbl 1076.82010)] to a wider class of nonamenable graphs.

MSC:

82C20	Dynamic lattice systems (kinetic Ising, etc.) and systems on graphs in time-dependent statistical mechanics
60K35	Interacting random processes; statistical mechanics type models; percolation theory
82B20	Lattice systems (Ising, dimer, Potts, etc.) and systems on graphs arising in equilibrium statistical mechanics
82C80	Numerical methods of time-dependent statistical mechanics (MSC2010)

Keywords:

stochastic Ising model; nonamenable graphs; spectral gap; mixing time

Citations:

Zbl 1076.82010