# References

Comment on “Percolation Properties of the 2D Heisenberg Model”

Adrian Patrascioiu

Physics Department, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, U.S.A.

and

Erhard Seiler

Max-Planck-Institut für Physik

– Werner-Heisenberg-Institut –

Föhringer Ring 6, 80805 Munich, Germany

## Abstract

We comment on a recent paper by Allès et al .

In a recent letter Allès at al  claim to show that the two dimensional classical Heisenberg model does not have a massless phase. The paper is an attempt to refute certain arguments advanced by us in 1991  , which remain posted among the Open Problems in Mathematical Physics on the web site of the International Association of Mathematical Physics ; thus the claim of Alles et al, if correct, would be very important. We appreciate that the authors made an effort to falsify our arguments, but in fact the paper is far from establishing its claim. It shows some fundamental misunderstanding of our arguments and contains several incorrect statements.

1. To simplify the discussion, following Allès et al, we will ignore the distinction between $``$-percolation and percolation; as suggested by their choice of cluster, we will consider the model with standard nearest neighbor action at inverse temperature $`\beta `$ as a model with a Lipschitz constraint $`|ss^{}|<ϵ`$ for neighboring spins $`s`$,$`s^{}`$ and suitable $`ϵ`$. Then from our 1991 arguments it follows rigorously that as long as the FK-clusters have finite mean size, i.e. in the massive phase, the equatorial cluster of width $`ϵ`$ must percolate. Everybody agrees that at $`\beta =2.0`$ the standard action model has a finite correlation length $`\xi `$ and in fact Allès et al even state the value of $`L/\xi `$. Therefore their finding that the equatorial cluster they considered percolates is nothing but another indication that at $`\beta =2.0`$ the model is still massive. To prove that our 1991 conjecture is false, they would have to show that for any arbitrarily small $`ϵ`$ there exists a finite $`\beta _p(ϵ)`$ such that for any $`\beta >\beta _p(ϵ)`$ the equatorial cluster $`S_ϵ`$ percolates.

2. In 1991 we also gave an auxiliary argument: if, contrary to our expectation, an arbitrarily thin equatorial cluster percolated at sufficiently large $`\beta `$, then the $`O(3)`$ symmetry would be broken, since then there would be a much larger equatorial cluster on which the induced $`O(2)`$ model would be in its massless (KT) phase. Allès et all suggest that this argument fails because the percolating cluster they found at $`\beta =2.0`$ is very flimsy, having a fractal dimension less than 2. To support their reasoning, they quote a result of Koma and Tasaki  that for $`D<2`$ the KT phase does not exist. The claim that this percolating cluster has a fractal dimension less than 2 is in conflict with their own numbers in Tab.1, showing that this cluster has a nonvanishing density. This is of course not surprising, since for a translation invariant percolation problem in $`2D`$ the (unique) percolating cluster under rather general conditions always has a finite density .

3. In support of the fractal picture, Allès et al point out the fact that the ratio of the perimeter over the area of the cluster does not go to 0 as its size increases. Consider then a regular square lattice on which square holes of size $`L\times L`$ have been made, in such a way that a percolating subset remains. The ratio of its perimeter to its area does not vanish and there should be no doubt that on such a lattice the $`O(2)`$ model has a KT phase for any finite $`L`$.

4. In view of this, we think that even on the ‘flimsy’ percolating cluster found by Allès et all, the $`O(2)`$ model does have a KT phase at low enough temperature. It would be interesting to verify this, even though our argument does not depend on the existence of such a transition on that particular percolating cluster.