Free energy of Ising models under a spectral condition

Abstract

A sequence of sparse weighted graphs $(G_N:N\ge 1)$ indexed by the number of vertices $N$ is said to be left-convergent if all (suitably weighted) subgraph counts converge to a limit as $N\to\infty$. This notion generalizes in a natural way Benjamini-Schramm's definition of local weak convergence. A broad research agenda aims at determining which `global' graph properties are determined by left or local weak convergence (in other words, which of these properties are in fact local). We prove that, under a spectral condition on the weighted adjacency matrix ${\boldsymbol A}_N$ of graph $G_N$, the free energy density of the Ising model on this weighted graph is continuous in the left convergence topology (and hence is a local function). Our proof uses the decomposition of the Ising measure as a log-concave combination of product measures, and of the rapid mixing of Langevin dynamics for log-concave measures. As applications, we derive new limit theorems for the free energy density of spin glasses, antiferromagnets, and magnetization constrained ferromagnetic models, on locally tree-like graphs.