Local and global geometry of the 2D Ising interface in critical prewetting (Q2039464)

The authors consider the Ising model at low temperature and positive external field on a \(N\times N\) box of \(\mathbb Z^2\) with plus boundary condition on the top, left and right boundaries of the box and minus on the bottom boundary. They study the behavior of the interface separating the plus and minus phases in the regime of low temperature \(\beta>\beta_c\) and small positive external field \(\lambda =\lambda_N = \frac{c}{N}\) (critical prewetting regime). The main result of the paper gives sharp bounds on the upper tail for the height of the interface at \(x_N\in[\varepsilon N, (1-\varepsilon)N]\) rescaled by \(N^{-\frac13}\). The bounds resemble the Tracy-Widom distribution, which is a strong evidence for the conjectured convergence to the Ferrary-Spohn diffusion in local windows. Using this result, the authors prove tightness and large deviation bounds for the area under the interface rescaled by \(N^{-\frac43}\), particularly, proving Conjecture 3.1 of [\textit{D. Ioffe} and \textit{Y. Velenik}, Markov Process. Relat. Fields 24, No. 3, 487--537 (2018; Zbl 1414.60079)] and Conjecture 1 of [\textit{Y. Velenik}, Probab. Theory Relat. Fields 129, No. 1, 83--112 (2004; Zbl 1078.60088)]. The authors also investigate global fluctuations of the interface. In particular, they prove a concentration estimate for the number of points above which the interface attains a large height and identify the correct order of the maximum height as \(N^{\frac13}(\log N)^{\frac23}\). Many of the arguments in the paper should generalize to a wider range of external fields \(\lambda_N\) converging to \(0\) not too slowly.