The Potts model and the independence polynomial Uniqueness of the Gibbs measure and distributions of complex zeros

Part 1 of this dissertation studies the antiferromagnetic Potts model, which originates in statistical physics. In particular the transition from multiple Gibbs measures to a unique Gibbs measure for the antiferromagnetic Potts model on the infinite regular tree is studied. This is called a uniqueness phase transition. A folklore conjecture about the parameter at which the uniqueness phase transition occurs is partly confirmed. The proof uses a geometric condition, which comes from analysing an associated dynamical system.
Part 2 of this dissertation concerns zeros of the independence polynomial. The independence polynomial originates in statistical physics as the partition function of the hard-core model. The location of the complex zeros of the independence polynomial is related to phase transitions in terms of the analycity of the free energy and plays an important role in the design of efficient algorithms to approximately compute evaluations of the independence polynomial. Chapter 5 directly relates the location of the complex zeros of the independence polynomial to computational hardness of approximating evaluations of the independence polynomial. This is done by moreover relating the set of zeros of the independence polynomial to chaotic behaviour of a naturally associated family of rational functions; the occupation ratios. Chapter 6 studies boundedness of zeros of the independence polynomial of tori for sequences of tori converging to the integer lattice. It is shown that zeros are bounded for sequences of balanced tori, but unbounded for sequences of highly unbalanced tori.