Uniqueness of zero-temperature metastate in disordered Ising ferromagnets

Abstract

We study ground states of Ising models with random ferromagnetic couplings, proving the triviality of all zero-temperature metastates. This unexpected result sheds a new light on the properties of these systems, putting strong restrictions on their possible ground state structure. Open problems related to existence of interface-supporting ground states are stated and an interpretation of the main result in terms of first-passage and random surface models in a random environment is presented.