Solvable eight-vertex model on an arbitrary planar lattice

R. J. Baxter

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series A Mathematical and Physical Sciences · 1978 · 301 citations · 5 references

Concepts

TL;DR

Planar sets of intersecting straight lines form four‑coordinated lattices when no three lines meet at a point. An eight‑vertex model can be built on any such lattice and, when its interactions satisfy specific (typically temperature‑dependent) constraints, it is exactly solvable in the thermodynamic limit with local properties equivalent to those of a related square lattice. The solvable Kagomé‑lattice eight‑vertex model subsumes many exactly solved statistical‑mechanics models—including the square, triangular, honeycomb Ising models and the square eight‑vertex model—and reveals remarkable equivalences between correlations on different lattices.

Abstract

Any planar set of intersecting straight lines forms a four-coordinated graph, or ‘lattice’, provided no three lines intersect at a point. For any such lattice an eight-vertex model can be constructed. Provided the interactions satisfy certain constraints (which are in general temperature-dependent), the model can be solved exactly in the thermodynamic limit, its local properties at a particular site being those of a related square lattice. A particular case is a solvable model on the Kagomé lattice. It is shown that this model includes as special cases many of the models in statistical mechanics that have been solved exactly, notably the square, triangular and honeycomb Ising models, and the square eight-vertex model. Some remarkable equivalences between correlations on different lattices are also established.

References

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