Phase Transitions on 1d Long-Range Ising Models with Decaying Fields: A Direct Proof via Contours

Abstract: Following seminal work by J. Fr\"ohlich and T. Spencer on the critical exponent $\alpha=2$, we give a proof via contours of phase transition in the one-dimensional long-range ferromagnetic Ising model in the entire region of decay, where phase transition is known to occur, i.e., polynomial decay $\alpha \in (1,2]$. No assumptions that the nearest-neighbor interaction $J(1)$ is large are made. The robustness of the method also yields a proof of phase transition in the presence of a nonsummable external field that decays sufficiently fast.