On the zero-temperature limit of Gibbs states (Q981719)

The central problem of equilibrium statistical mechanics is the description of families of Gibbs states for a given interaction. The goal is to describe the set of Gibbs states as a set of function of inverse temperature, magnetic field, chemical potential, etc. Especially interesting is the zero temperature limit since this is connected to ground states, i.e. the probability measures supported on configuration with minimal energy. Now the purpose is to show the zero temperature limit in case of a classical lattice system. A shift invariant summable interaction is considered and the limiting behavior of the set of Gibbs states is studied. It is shown that the Lipschitz (Hölder) potentials lead to the situation that the associated Gibbs measures fail to converge as the temperature goes to zero. Thus there are exponentially decaying interactions on the configuration space for which the zero temperature limit of the associated Gibbs measure does not exist.