A Gauge Invariant Dual Gonihedric 3D Ising Model

Abstract

We note that two formulations of dual gonihedric Ising models in 3d, one based on using Wegner's general framework for duality to construct a dual Hamiltonian for codimension one surfaces, the other on constructing a dual Hamiltonian for two-dimensional surfaces, are related by a variant of the standard decoration/iteration transformation. The dual Hamiltonian for two-dimensional surfaces contains a mixture of link and vertex spins and as a consequence possesses a gauge invariance which is inherited by the codimension one surface Hamiltonian. This gauge invariance ensures the latter is equivalent to a third formulation, an anisotropic Ashkin-Teller model. We describe the equivalences in detail and discuss some Monte-Carlo simulations which support these observations.