Kac-Ward operators, Kasteleyn operators, and s-holomorphicity on arbitrary surface graphs

The conformal invariance and universality results of Chelkak-Smirnov on the two-dimensional Ising model hold for isoradial planar graphs with critical weights. Motivated by the problem of extending these results to a wider class of graphs, we define a generalized notion of s-holomorphicity for functions on arbitrary weighted surface graphs. We then give three criteria for s-holomorphicity involving the Kac-Ward, Kasteleyn, and discrete Dirac operators, respectively. Also, we show that some crucial results known to hold in the planar isoradial case extend to this general setting: in particular, spin-Ising fermionic observables are s-holomorphic, and it is possible to define a discrete version of the integral of the square of an s-holomorphic function. Along the way, we obtain a duality result for Kac-Ward determinants on arbitrary weighted surface graphs.