Large N matrices from a nonlocal spin system
  Large N matrices underpin the best understood models of emergent spacetime. We suggest that large N matrices can themselves be emergent from simple quantum mechanical spin models with finite dimensional Hilbert spaces. We exhibit the emergence of large N matrices in a nonlocal statistical physics model of order N^2 Ising spins. The spin partition function is shown to admit a large N saddle described by a matrix integral, which we solve. The matrix saddle is dominant at high temperatures, metastable at intermediate temperatures and ceases to exist below a critical order one temperature. The matrix saddle is disordered in a sense we make precise and competes with ordered low energy states. We verify our analytic results by Monte Carlo simulation of the spin system. 
Dionysios Anninos, Sean A. Hartnoll, Liza Huijse and Victoria L.   Martin
hep-th