MATH 505 Project: Ising model – Phase transition

Ising model is a mathematical model of ferromagnetism in statistical mechanics, which was invented by Wilhelm Lenz (1920). Wilhelm Lenz gave the model as a problem to his student Ernst Ising. Ising solved this problem in one-dimension in his PHD thesis (1924)[1], which worked on linear chains of coupled magnetic moments. Rudolf Peierls named this model by Ising model in his 1936 publication “On Ising’s model of ferromagnetism”. However, this model was ignored by most scientists for many years and even Ising himself gave up due to the di culty of solving two-dimensional Ising model. Almost twenty years later, Lars Onsager, winner of the 1968 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, solved two dimensional Ising model in 1944 and exhibited phase transition. And then Ising model enjoyed increased popularity and took its place as the preferred basic theory of all cooperative phenomena. In that time, Ising model is the only one which o↵ers much hope of an accurate study of mechanism. More and more people involved in solving high dimensional Ising model. They modeled phase transition in higher dimensions.