Spin glasses and Stein's method

Abstract

We introduce some applications of Stein's method in the high temperature analysis of spin glasses. Stein's method allows the direct analysis of the Gibbs measure without having to create a cavity. Another advantage is that it gives limit theorems with total variation error bounds, although the bounds can be suboptimal. A surprising byproduct of our analysis is a relatively transparent explanation of the Thouless-Anderson-Palmer system of equations. Along the way, we develop Stein's method for mixtures of two Gaussian densities.