Periodic Striped Ground States in Ising Models with Competing Interactions

We consider Ising models in two and three dimensions, with short range ferromagnetic and long range, power-law decaying, antiferromagnetic interactions. We let J be the ratio between the strength of the ferromagnetic to antiferromagnetic interactions. The competition between these two kinds of interactions induces the system to form domains of minus spins in a background of plus spins, or vice versa. If the decay exponent p of the long range interaction is larger than d + 1, with d the space dimension, this happens for all values of J smaller than a critical value Jc(p), beyond which the ground state is homogeneous. In this paper, we give a characterization of the infinite volume ground states of the system, for p > 2d and J in a left neighborhood of Jc(p). In particular, we prove that the quasi-one-dimensional states consisting of infinite stripes (d = 2) or slabs (d = 3), all of the same optimal width and orientation, and alternating magnetization, are infinite volume ground states. Our proof is based on localization bounds combined with reflection positivity.