English

Imry-Ma phenomenon for the hard-core model on $\mathbb{Z}^{2}$

Probability 2026-01-12 v1

Abstract

The \emph{Imry-Ma phenomenon} refers to the dramatic effect that disorder can have on first-order phase transitions for two-dimensional spin systems. The most famous example is the absence of a phase transition for the two-dimensional random-field Ising model. This paper establishes that a similar phenomena takes place for the hard-core model, a discrete model of crystallization: arbitrarily weak disorder prevents the formation of a crystal. Our proof of this behaviour is an adaptation of the Aizenman-Wehr argument for the Imry-Ma phenomenon, with the use of internal (spin space) symmetries for spin systems being replaced by the use spatial symmetries.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.05798,
  title  = {Imry-Ma phenomenon for the hard-core model on $\mathbb{Z}^{2}$},
  author = {Irene Ayuso Ventura and Leandro Chiarini and Tyler Helmuth and Ellen Powell},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.05798},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

14 pages, 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T08:57:45.793Z