We study Glauber dynamics for the Ising model on the complete graph on $n$ vertices, known as the Curie-Weiss Model. It is well known that at high temperature ($β< 1$) the mixing time is $Θ(n\log n)$, whereas at low temperature ($β> 1$) it is $\exp(Θ(n))$. Recently, Levin, Luczak and Peres considered a censored version of this dynamics, which is restricted to non-negative magnetization. They proved that for fixed $β> 1$, the mixing-time of this model is $Θ(n\log n)$, analogous to the high-temperature regime of the original dynamics. Furthermore, they showed \emph{cutoff} for the original dynamics for fixed $β<1$. The question whether the censored dynamics also exhibits cutoff remained unsettled.
In a companion paper, we extended the results of Levin et al. into a complete characterization of the mixing-time for the Currie-Weiss model. Namely, we found a scaling window of order $1/\sqrt{n}$ around the critical temperature $β_c=1$, beyond which there is cutoff at high temperature. However, determining the behavior of the censored dynamics outside this critical window seemed significantly more challenging.
In this work we answer the above question in the affirmative, and establish the cutoff point and its window for the censored dynamics beyond the critical window, thus completing its analogy to the original dynamics at high temperature. Namely, if $β= 1 + δ$ for some $δ> 0$ with $δ^2 n \to \infty$, then the mixing-time has order $(n / δ)\log(δ^2 n)$. The cutoff constant is $(1/2+[2(ζ^2 β/ δ- 1)]^{-1})$, where $ζ$ is the unique positive root of $g(x)=\tanh(βx)-x$, and the cutoff window has order $n / δ$.
It has been recently shown by H.Weber and J.C. Mourrat, for the two-dimensional Ising-Kac model at critical temperature, that the fluctuation field of the magnetization, under the Glauber dynamic, converges in distribution to the solution of a non linear ill-posed SPDE: the dynamical $Φ^4_2$ equation. In this article we consider the case of the multivatiate stochastic quantization equation $Φ^{2n}_2$ on the two-dimensional torus, and we answer to a conjecture of H.Weber and H.Shen. We show that it is possible to find a state space for a spin system on the two-dimensional discrete torus undergo…
We study the Glauber dynamics for the Ising model on the complete graph, also known as the Curie-Weiss Model. For beta < 1, we prove that the dynamics exhibits a cut-off: the distance to stationarity drops from near 1 to near 0 in a window of order n centered at [2(1-beta)]^{-1} n log n. For beta = 1, we prove that the mixing time is of order n^{3/2}. For beta > 1, we study metastability. In particular, we show that the Glauber dynamics restricted to states of non-negative magnetization has mixing time O(n log n).
In this paper, the Glauber dynamics for the Ising model on the complete multipartite graph $K_{np_1,\dots,np_m}$ is investigated where $0<p_i<1$ is the proportion of the vertices in the $i$th component. We show that the dynamics exhibits the cutoff phenomena at $t_n = \frac{1}{2(1-β/β_{cr})} n\ln n $ with window size $O(n)$ in the high temperature regime $β< β_{cr}$ where $β_{cr}$ is a constant only depending on $p_1,\dots,p_m$. Exponentially slow mixing is shown in the low temperature regime $β>β_{cr}$.
We prove that Ising models on the hypercube with general quadratic interactions satisfy a Poincaré inequality with respect to the natural Dirichlet form corresponding to Glauber dynamics, as soon as the operator norm of the interaction matrix is smaller than $1$. The inequality implies a control on the mixing time of the Glauber dynamics. Our techniques rely on a localization procedure which establishes a structural result, stating that Ising measures may be decomposed into a mixture of measures with quadratic potentials of rank one, and provides a framework for proving concentration bounds fo…
We prove an optimal $O(n \log n)$ mixing time of the Glauber dynamics for the Ising models with edge activity $β\in \left(\frac{Δ-2}Δ, \fracΔ{Δ-2}\right)$. This mixing time bound holds even if the maximum degree $Δ$ is unbounded. We refine the boosting technique developed in [CFYZ21], and prove a new boosting theorem by utilizing the entropic independence defined in [AJK+21]. The theorem relates the modified log-Sobolev (MLS) constant of the Glauber dynamics for a near-critical Ising model to that for an Ising model in a sub-critical regime.
Motivated by a recent use of Glauber dynamics for Monte-Carlo simulations of path integral representation of quantum spin models [Krzakala, Rosso, Semerjian, and Zamponi, Phys. Rev. B (2008)], we analyse a natural Glauber dynamics for the quantum Ising model with a transverse field on a finite graph $G$. We establish strict monotonicity properties of the equilibrium distribution and we extend (and improve) the censoring inequality of Peres and Winkler to the quantum setting. Then we consider the case when $G$ is a regular $b$-ary tree and prove the same fast mixing results established in [Mart…
This work is devoted to an in-depth analysis of arbitrary temperature protocols applied to the ferromagnetic Glauber-Ising chain launched from a disordered initial state and evolving in the low-temperature scaling regime. We focus our study on the density of domain walls and the reduced susceptibility. Both the inverse of the former observable and the latter one provide two independent measures of the typical size of the growing ferromagnetic domains. Their product is thus a dimensionless form factor characterising the pattern of growing ordered domains and providing a measure of the distance …
In the study of Markov chain mixing times, analysis has centered on the performance from a worst-case starting state. Here, in the context of Glauber dynamics for the one-dimensional Ising model, we show how new ideas from information percolation can be used to establish mixing times from other starting states. At high temperatures we show that the alternating initial condition is asymptotically the fastest one, and, surprisingly, its mixing time is faster than at infinite temperature, accelerating as the inverse-temperature $β$ ranges from 0 to $β_0=\frac12\mathrm{arctanh}(\frac13)$. Moreover…
In this paper, we prove a general result concerning finite-range, attractive interacting particle systems on $\{-1, 1\}^{\mathbb{Z}^d}$. If the particle system has a unique stationary measure and, in a precise sense, relaxes to this stationary measure at an exponential rate then any small perturbation of the dynamics also has a unique stationary measure to which it relaxes at an exponential rate. To augment this result, we study the particular case of Glauber dynamics for the Ising model. We show that for any non-zero external field the dynamics converges to its unique invariant measure at an …
In this study, we investigate the energy landscape of the Ising and Potts models on fixed and finite but large three-dimensional (3D) lattices where no external field exists and quantitatively characterize the metastable behavior of the associated Glauber dynamics in the very low temperature regime. Such analyses for the models with non-zero external magnetic fields have been extensively performed over the past two decades; however, models without external fields remained uninvestigated. Recently, the corresponding investigation has been conducted for the two-dimensional (2D) model without an …
We study heat-bath Glauber dynamics for the ferromagnetic Ising model on a finite cycle (a graph where every vertex has degree two). We prove that the relaxation time $τ_2$ is an increasing function of any of the couplings $J_{xy}$. We also prove some further inequalities, and obtain exact asymptotics for $τ_2$ at low temperatures.
We study the Glauber dynamics of a two dimensional Blume-Capel model (or dilute Ising model) with Kac potential parametrized by $(β,θ)$ - the "inverse temperature" and the "chemical potential". We prove that the locally averaged spin field rescales to the solution of the dynamical $Φ^4$ equation near a curve in the $(β,θ)$ plane and to the solution of the dynamical $Φ^6$ equation near one point on this curve. Our proof relies on a discrete implementation of Da Prato-Debussche method as in a result by Mourrat-Weber but an additional coupling argument is needed to show convergence of the lineari…
We give the first comprehensive analysis of the effect of boundary conditions on the mixing time of the Glauber dynamics in the so-called Bethe approximation. Specifically, we show that spectral gap and the log-Sobolev constant of the Glauber dynamics for the Ising model on an n-vertex regular tree with plus-boundary are bounded below by a constant independent of n at all temperatures and all external fields. This implies that the mixing time is O(log n) (in contrast to the free boundary case, where it is not bounded by any fixed polynomial at low temperatures). In addition, our methods yield …
We give a survey of the known results on mixing time of Glauber dynamics for the Ising model on the square lattice and present a technique that makes exact sampling of the Ising model at all temperatures possible in polynomial time. At high temperatures this is well-known and although this seems to be known also in the low temperature case since Kramer and Waniers paper from the 1950s, we did not found any reference that describes exact sampling for the Ising model at low temperatures.
The topic we address in this paper concerns the minimization of a Hamiltonian function for an Ising model through the application of simulated annealing algorithms based on (single-site) Glauber dynamics and stochastic cellular automata (SCA). Some rigorous results are presented in order to justify the application of simulated annealing for a particular kind of SCA. After that, we compare the SCA algorithm and its variation, namely the $\varepsilon$-SCA algorithm, studied in this paper with the Glauber dynamics by analyzing their accuracy in obtaining optimal solutions for the max-cut problem …
We study continuous time Glauber dynamics for random configurations with local constraints (e.g. proper coloring, Ising and Potts models) on finite graphs with $n$ vertices and of bounded degree. We show that the relaxation time (defined as the reciprocal of the spectral gap $|λ_1-λ_2|$) for the dynamics on trees and on planar hyperbolic graphs, is polynomial in $n$. For these hyperbolic graphs, this yields a general polynomial sampling algorithm for random configurations. We then show that if the relaxation time $τ_2$ satisfies $τ_2=O(1)$, then the correlation coefficient, and the mutual info…
We study zero-temperature Glauber dynamics on \Z^d, which is a dynamic version of the Ising model of ferromagnetism. Spins are initially chosen according to a Bernoulli distribution with density p, and then the states are continuously (and randomly) updated according to the majority rule. This corresponds to the sudden quenching of a ferromagnetic system at high temperature with an external field, to one at zero temperature with no external field. Define p_c(\Z^d) to be the infimum over p such that the system fixates at '+' with probability 1. It is a folklore conjecture that p_c(\Z^d) = 1/2 f…
Consider Glauber dynamics for the Ising model on a graph of $n$ vertices. Hayes and Sinclair showed that the mixing time for this dynamics is at least $n\log n/f(Δ)$, where $Δ$ is the maximum degree and $f(Δ) = Θ(Δ\log^2 Δ)$. Their result applies to more general spin systems, and in that generality, they showed that some dependence on $Δ$ is necessary. In this paper, we focus on the ferromagnetic Ising model and prove that the mixing time of Glauber dynamics on any $n$-vertex graph is at least $(1/4+o(1))n \log n$.
We investigate the problem of constructing a dynamics on edge--spin configurations which realizes a coupling between a Glauber dynamics of the Ising model and a dynamical evolution of the percolation configurations. We dream of constructing a Markov process on edge--spin configurations which is reversible with respect to the Ising--FK coupling measure, and such that the marginal on the spins is a Glauber dynamics, while the marginal on the edges is a Markovian evolution. We present two local dynamics, one which fulfills only the first condition and one which fulfills the first two conditions. …
We prove that the pressure (or free energy) of the finite range ferromagnetic Ising model on $\mathbb{Z}^d$ is analytic as a function of both the inverse temperature $β$ and the magnetic field $h$ whenever the model has the exponential weak mixing property. We also prove the exponential weak mixing property whenever $h\neq 0$. Together with known results on the regime $h=0,β<β_c$, this implies both analyticity and weak mixing in all the domain of $(β,h)$ outside of the transition line $[β_c,\infty)\times \{0\}$. The proof of analyticity uses a graphical representation of the Glauber dynamic du…
We provide a general bound on the Wasserstein distance between two arbitrary distributions of sequences of Bernoulli random variables. The bound is in terms of a mixing quantity for the Glauber dynamics of one of the sequences, and a simple expectation of the other. The result is applied to estimate, with explicit error, expectations of functions of random vectors for some Ising models and exponential random graphs in "high temperature" regimes.
We consider Glauber dynamics for the Ising model on the complete graph on $n$ vertices, known as the Curie-Weiss model. It is well-known that the mixing-time in the high temperature regime ($β< 1$) has order $n\log n$, whereas the mixing-time in the case $β> 1$ is exponential in $n$. Recently, Levin, Luczak and Peres proved that for any fixed $β< 1$ there is cutoff at time $[2(1-β)]^{-1} n\log n$ with a window of order $n$, whereas the mixing-time at the critical temperature $β=1$ is $Θ(n^{3/2})$. It is natural to ask how the mixing-time transitions from $Θ(n\log n)$ to $Θ(n^{3/2})$ and finall…
We analyse the metastable behaviour of the dilute Curie-Weiss model subject to a Glauber dynamics. The model is a random version of a mean-field Ising model, where the coupling coefficients are Bernoulli random variables with mean $p\in (0,1)$. This model can be also viewed as an Ising model on the Erdős-Rényi random graph with edge probability $p$. The system is a Markov chain where spins flip according to a Metropolis dynamics at inverse temperature $β$. We compute the average time the system takes to reach the stable phase when it starts from a certain probability distribution on the metast…
In this note we consider the Glauber dynamics for the mean-field Ising model, when all couplings are equal and the external field is uniform. It is proved that the relaxation time of the dynamics is monotonically decreasing in temperature.
Introduced in 1963, Glauber dynamics is one of the most practiced and extensively studied methods for sampling the Ising model on lattices. It is well known that at high temperatures, the time it takes this chain to mix in $L^1$ on a system of size $n$ is $O(\log n)$. Whether in this regime there is cutoff, i.e. a sharp transition in the $L^1$-convergence to equilibrium, is a fundamental open problem: If so, as conjectured by Peres, it would imply that mixing occurs abruptly at $(c+o(1))\log n$ for some fixed $c>0$, thus providing a rigorous stopping rule for this MCMC sampler. However, obtain…
Consider random $d$-regular graphs, i.e., random graphs such that there are exactly $d$ edges from each vertex for some $d\ge 3$. We study both the configuration model version of this graph, which has occasional multi-edges and self-loops, as well as the simple version of it, which is a $d$-regular graph chosen uniformly at random from the collection of all $d$-regular graphs. In this paper, we discuss mixing times of Glauber dynamics for the Ising model with an external magnetic field on a random $d$-regular graph, both in the quenched as well as the annealed settings. Let $β$ be the inverse …
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 growi…
We study dynamical aspects of the $q$-state Potts model on an $n\times n$ box at its critical $β_c(q)$. Heat-bath Glauber dynamics and cluster dynamics such as Swendsen--Wang (that circumvent low-temperature bottlenecks) are all expected to undergo "critical slowdowns" in the presence of periodic boundary conditions: the inverse spectral gap, which in the subcritical regime is $O(1)$, should at criticality be polynomial in $n$ for $1< q \leq 4$, and exponential in $n$ for $q>4$ in accordance with the predicted discontinuous phase transition. This was confirmed for $q=2$ (the Ising model) by th…
We consider Glauber dynamics for the low-temperature, ferromagnetic Ising Model set on the n-dimensional hypercube. We derive precise asymptotic results for the crossover time (the time it takes for the dynamics to go from the configuration with a "-1" at every vertex, to the configuration with a "+1" at each vertex) in the limit as the inverse temperature $β\rightarrow\infty$.
We study the Glauber dynamics for the zero-temperature Ising model in dimension d=4 with "plus" boundary condition.Let T+ be the time needed for an hypercube of size L entirely filled with "minus" spins to become entirely "plus". We prove that T+ is O(L^2(log L)^c) for some constant c, not depending on the dimension. This brings further rigorous justification for the so-called "Lifshitz law" T+ = O(L^2) [5, 3] conjectured on heuristic grounds. The key point of our proof is to use the detail knowledge that we have on the three-dimensional problem: results for fluctuation of monotone interfaces …
We show that the mixing time of Glauber (single edge update) dynamics for the random cluster model at $q=2$ is bounded by a polynomial in the size of the underlying graph. As a consequence, the Swendsen-Wang algorithm for the ferromagnetic Ising model at any temperature has the same polynomial mixing time bound.
We prove an optimal $Ω(n^{-1})$ lower bound on the spectral gap of Glauber dynamics for anti-ferromagnetic two-spin systems with $n$ vertices in the tree uniqueness regime. This spectral gap holds for all, including unbounded, maximum degree $Δ$. Consequently, we have the following mixing time bounds for the models satisfying the uniqueness condition with a slack $δ\in(0,1)$: $\bullet$ $C(δ) n^2\log n$ mixing time for the hardcore model with fugacity $λ\le (1-δ)λ_c(Δ)= (1-δ)\frac{(Δ- 1)^{Δ- 1}}{(Δ- 2)^Δ}$; $\bullet$ $C(δ) n^2$ mixing time for the Ising model with edge activity $β\in\left[\frac…
A variance inequality for spin-flip systems is obtained using comparatively weaker knowledge of relaxation to equilibrium based on coupling estimates for single site disturbances. We obtain variance inequalities interpolating between the Poincaré inequality and the uniform variance inequality, and a general weak Poincaré inequality. For monotone dynamics the variance inequality can be obtained from decay of the autocorrelation of the spin at the origin, i.e., from that decay we conclude decay for general functions. This method is then applied to the low temperature Ising model, where the time-…
In this paper we consider the Glauber dynamics for the one-dimensional Ising model with dissipation, in a mesoscopic regime obtained by letting inverse temperature and volume go to infinity with a suitable scaling. In this limit the magnetization has a periodic behavior. Self-organized collective periodicity has been shown for many mean-field models but, to our knowledge, this is the first example with short-range interaction. This supports the view that self-organized periodicity is not linked with the mean-field assumption but it is a thermodynamic phenomenon compatible with short range inte…
Consider Glauber dynamics for the Ising model on the hypercubic lattice with a positive magnetic field. Starting from the minus configuration, the system initially settles into a metastable state with negative magnetization. Slowly the system relaxes to a stable state with positive magnetization. Schonmann and Shlosman showed that in the two dimensional case the relaxation time is a simple function of the energy required to create a critical Wulff droplet. The dilute Ising model is obtained from the regular Ising model by deleting a fraction of the edges of the underlying graph. In this paper …
In this paper we consider the Glauber dynamics for a disordered ferromagnetic Ising model, in the region of phase coexistence. It was conjectured several decades ago that the spin autocorrelation decays as a negative power of time [Huse and Fisher, Phys. Rev. B, 1987]. We confirm this behavior by establishing a corresponding lower bound in any dimensions $d \geqslant 2$, together with an upper bound when $d=2$. Our approach is deeply connected to the Wulff construction for the dilute Ising model. We consider initial phase profiles with a reduced surface tension on their boundary and prove that…
We study the sampling problem for the ferromagnetic Ising model with consistent external fields, and in particular, Swendsen-Wang dynamics on this model. We introduce a new grand model unifying two closely related models: the subgraph world and the random cluster model. Through this new viewpoint, we show: (1) polynomial mixing time bounds for Swendsen-Wang dynamics and (edge-flipping) Glauber dynamics of the random cluster model, generalising the bounds and simplifying the proofs for the no-field case by Guo and Jerrum (2018); (2) near linear mixing time for the two dynamics above if the maxi…
We consider Ising models on the hypercube with a general interaction matrix $J$, and give a polynomial time sampling algorithm when all but $O(1)$ eigenvalues of $J$ lie in an interval of length one, a situation which occurs in many models of interest. This was previously known for the Glauber dynamics when *all* eigenvalues fit in an interval of length one; however, a single outlier can force the Glauber dynamics to mix torpidly. Our general result implies the first polynomial time sampling algorithms for low-rank Ising models such as Hopfield networks with a fixed number of patterns and Baye…
We present a polynomial-time Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm for estimating the partition function of the antiferromagnetic Ising model on any line graph. The analysis of the algorithm exploits the "winding" technology devised by McQuillan [CoRR abs/1301.2880 (2013)] and developed by Huang, Lu and Zhang [Proc. 27th Symp. on Disc. Algorithms (SODA16), 514-527]. We show that exact computation of the partition function is #P-hard, even for line graphs, indicating that an approximation algorithm is the best that can be expected. We also show that Glauber dynamics for the Ising model is rapidly …
Peres and Winkler proved a "censoring" inequality for Glauber dynamics on monotone spins systems such as the Ising model. Specifically, if, starting from a constant-spin configuration, the spins are updated at some sequence of sites, then inserting another site into this sequence brings the resulting configuration closer in total variation to the stationary distribution. We show by means of simple counterexamples that the analogous statements fail for Glauber dynamics on proper colorings of a graph, and for lazy transpositions on permutations, answering two questions of Peres. It is not known …
For the zero temperature limit of Ising Glauber Dynamics on 2D slabs the existence or nonexistence of vertices that do not fixate is determined as a function of slab thickness.
We investigate zero-temperature dynamics on the hexagonal lattice H for the homogeneous ferromagnetic Ising model with zero external magnetic field and a disordered ferromagnetic Ising model with a positive external magnetic field h. We consider both continuous time (asynchronous) processes and, in the homogeneous case, also discrete time synchronous dynamics (i.e., a deterministic cellular automaton), alternating between two sublattices of H. The state space consists of assignments of -1 or +1 to each site of H, and the processes are zero-temperature limits of stochastic Ising ferromagnets wi…
