Stein's Method for Stationary Distributions of Markov Chains and Application to Ising Models

Abstract

We develop a new technique, based on Stein's method, for comparing two stationary distributions of irreducible Markov Chains whose update rules are `close enough'. We apply this technique to compare Ising models on $d$-regular expander graphs to the Curie-Weiss model (complete graph) in terms of pairwise correlations and more generally $k$th order moments. Concretely, we show that $d$-regular Ramanujan graphs approximate the $k$th order moments of the Curie-Weiss model to within average error $k/\sqrt{d}$ (averaged over the size $k$ subsets). The result applies even in the low-temperature regime; we also derive some simpler approximation results for functionals of Ising models that hold only at high enough temperatures.