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# The Laplacian and ∂̄ operators on critical planar graphs

## 1 Introduction

Let $`𝒢`$ be a graph and $`c`$ a nonnegative weight function on the edges of $`𝒢`$ defining the edge conductances. We define the Laplacian operator $`\mathrm{\Delta }:^{|𝒢|}^{|𝒢|}`$ by

$$\mathrm{\Delta }f(u)=\underset{wu}{}c(uw)(f(u)f(w))$$

where the sum is over vertices $`w`$ adjacent to $`u`$. This is one of the most basic and useful operators on $`𝒢`$.

On the superposition of $`𝒢`$ and its planar dual $`𝒢^{}`$, we can define another operator, the $`\overline{}`$ operator, which defines “discrete analytic functions” (those which satisfy $`\overline{}f=0`$). In fact we will define $`\overline{}`$ on more general bipartite planar graphs, see section 3 below. In the form we use here the definition comes from a statistical mechanics model, the dimer model: the determinant of the $`\overline{}`$ operator is the partition function of the dimer model (see section 10).

We show that under a certain geometric condition, called isoradiality, on the embedding of a planar graph, the local structure of these two operators $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ and $`\overline{}`$ takes on a surprising simplicity. In particular one can write down explicitly the determinants and inverses of these operators, which only depend on local quantities: the determinants only depend on the edge weights (not the combinatorics) and the value of the inverse on two vertices $`v_1,v_2`$ only depends on a path between the vertices.

In particular for the determinants we have the following results. For the definitions see below.

###### Theorem 1.1

Let $`𝒢_T`$ be an isoradial embedding of a periodic planar graph and $`c`$ the associated weight function (giving the conductances on the edges). Then the logarithm of the normalized determinant of the Laplacian is

$$\mathrm{log}\mathrm{det}_1\mathrm{\Delta }=\frac{1}{\mathrm{N}}\underset{\text{edges }\mathrm{e}}{}\frac{2}{\pi }\left(\mathrm{L}(\theta )+\mathrm{L}(\frac{\pi }{2}\theta )\right)+\frac{2\theta }{\pi }\mathrm{log}\mathrm{tan}\theta ,$$

where $`N`$ is the number of vertices in a fundamental domain, the sum is over the set of edges in a fundamental domain, $`c(e)=\mathrm{tan}(\theta (e))`$ and $`L`$ is the Lobachevsky function,

$$L(x)=_0^x\mathrm{log}2\mathrm{sin}tdt.$$
(1)
The determinant of the Laplacian is useful since it computes the partition function for several other statistical mechancial models, among them the spanning tree model (see e.g. ) and the discrete Gaussian free field. For the $`\overline{}`$ operator we have

###### Theorem 1.2

Let $`𝒢_D`$ be an isoradial embedding of a periodic bipartite planar graph and $`\nu `$ the associated weight function on edges. Then the normalized determinant of the discrete $`\overline{}`$ operator satisfies

$$\mathrm{log}\mathrm{det}_1\overline{}=\frac{1}{\mathrm{N}}\underset{\text{edges }\mathrm{e}}{}\frac{1}{\pi }\mathrm{L}(\theta )+\frac{\theta }{\pi }\mathrm{log}2\mathrm{sin}\theta ,$$

where $`\nu (e)=2\mathrm{sin}\theta (e)`$, $`N`$ is the number of vertices in a fundamental domain, and the sum is over the edges in a fundamental domain.

For results on and explicit expressions for the inverses of these operators, see Theorems 4.2 and 7.1 below.

Similar statements can be made for nonperiodic graphs, on condition that the right-hand sides makes sense; for this one needs a unique ergodicity assumption on the translation action on the graph. We will restrict ourselves to periodic cases here.

To a graph $`𝒢_D`$ with critical weight function $`\nu `$ as in Theorem 1.2 is naturally associated a $`3`$-dimensional ideal hyperbolic polyhedron (with infinitely many vertices): it is the polyhedron $`P`$ in the upper-half space model of $`^3`$ whose vertices are those of $`𝒢_D^{}`$, the dual graph of $`𝒢_D`$. We give a geometric realization of a discrete analytic function as a deformation of the associated embedding of the graph, alternatively as a deformation of $`P`$. Furthermore there is a relation between the above determinants and the volume of the polyhedra, which identifies the entropy of the corresponding dimer model to the volume, and the mean energy to the mean curvature.

These results were inspired by the work of and discussions with Christian Mercat  who used isoradial embeddings (“critical” embeddings in his terminology) in the study of discrete analytic functions and the Ising model. Isoradial embeddings apparently first appeared in the work of Duffin . Our definition of “elementary” harmonic functions, see section 9, also appeared independently in , where a more detailed study of these functions is undertaken.

The outline of the paper is as follows.

* Section 2. We define “isoradial” embeddings and critical weight functions for planar graphs.
* Section 3. We define the $`\overline{}`$ operator, discrete analytic functions, and show in what sense they give perturbations of the embedding. We also prove the existence, unicity and asymptotics of the inverse $`\overline{}^1`$, as well as giving an explicit local formula.
* Section 5. We define the normalized determinant $`det_1\overline{}`$ and prove Theorem 1.2.
* Section 6. We point out the relation between the Laplacian and our $`\overline{}`$ operator in the case of graphs $`𝒢_T`$.
* Section 7. We compute the Green’s function on $`𝒢_T`$ and its asymptotics.
* Section 8. We prove that the set of isoradial embeddings of a graph is convex (and usually infinite dimensional), and $`\mathrm{log}det_1\mathrm{\Delta }`$ and $`\mathrm{log}det_1\overline{}`$ are concave functions on it.
* Section 9. We discuss a general construction of discrete analytic and discrete harmonic functions on critical graphs.
* Section 10. We discuss connections between the $`\overline{}`$ operator and the dimer model. Here we relate the volume and mean curvature of the polyhedron $`P`$ with the entropy and mean energy of the dimer model.

## 2 Critical weight functions

### 2.1 Polyhedral embeddings

Let $`𝒢`$ be a planar graph, and $`𝒢^{}`$ its planar dual. For a vertex $`v𝒢`$ we denote $`v^{}`$ its dual face of $`𝒢^{}`$. Similarly for an edge $`e`$ we denote by $`e^{}`$ its dual edge.

A polyhedral embedding of $`𝒢`$ is an embedding of $`𝒢`$ in the plane such that every face is a cyclic polygon, that is, is inscribable in a circle. A regular polyhedral embedding is a polyhedral embedding in which the circumcenters of the faces are contained in the closures of the faces.

A polyhedral embedding of a graph $`𝒢`$ defines a map from $`𝒢^{}`$, the dual of $`𝒢`$, to the plane, by sending a dual vertex to the circumcenter of the corresponding face of $`𝒢`$, and a dual edge to the segment joining its endpoints. If the embedding of $`𝒢`$ is regular, this map will be an embedding of $`𝒢^{}`$ unless some circumcenters are on the boundary of their faces, in which case some dual vertices may have the same image in the plane. In other words some edges of $`𝒢^{}`$ may have length $`0`$.

The term polyhedral refers to the fact that a polyhedral embedding gives rise to a three-dimensional ideal hyperbolic polyhedron, in the following way. The upper half-space model of hyperbolic space $`^3`$ is identified with $`\{(x,y,z)^3|z>0\}`$. A polyhedral embedding of $`𝒢`$ on the $`xy`$-plane is the vertical projection of the edges of an (infinite) ideal polyhedron $`P(𝒢)`$ whose vertices are the vertices of $`𝒢`$. If the polyhedral embedding is regular then $`P(𝒢)`$ is convex; the dihedral angle at an edge is the angle of intersection of the circumcircles of the two adjacent faces. This polyhedron will play a role in section 10.

### 2.2 Isoradial embeddings

An isoradial embedding is a regular polyhedral embedding in which all circumcircles have the same radius.

If the embedding of $`𝒢`$ is isoradial then the embedding of $`𝒢^{}`$ will also be isoradial, with the same radius. We will always take the common radius to be $`1`$. To each edge $`e`$ of $`𝒢`$ we associate a rhombus $`R(e)`$ whose vertices are the vertices of $`e`$ and the vertices of its dual edge. The rhombus is therefore of edge length $`1`$ and the angle at a vertex of $`𝒢`$ is in $`[0,\pi ]`$. See Figure 1.

A chain of rhombi is an bi-infinite sequence of rhombi $`\{\mathrm{},x_i,x_{i+1},\mathrm{}\}`$ with $`x_{i+1}`$ adjacent to $`x_i`$ along the edge opposite the edge along which $`x_{i1}`$ and $`x_i`$ are adjacent. The rhombi in a chain all contain an edge parallel to a given direction. When $`𝒢`$ is bipartite, the vertices of $`𝒢`$ in a rhombus chain are alternately black and white, so that a chain has a “black” side and a “white” side.

Note that a rhombus chain cannot cross itself (since it is monotone) and two rhombus chains cannot cross each other more than once, since at the crossing point the rhombus which both chains have in common has orientation determined by the relative orientations of the two chains.

Which planar graphs have isoradial embeddings? Here is an explicit conjecture. A zig-zag path in a planar graph is an edge path which alternately turns right and left, that is, upon arriving at a vertex it takes the first edge to the left, then upon arriving at the next vertex takes the first edge to the right, and so on. If the graph has an isoradial embedding a zig-zag path corresponds to a chain of rhombi. Consequently two necessary conditions for the existence of an isoradial embedding are that a zig-zag path cannot cross itself, and two zig-zag paths cannot cross each other more than once. We conjecture that these two conditions are sufficient as well.

###### Conjecture 1

A planar graph has an isoradial embedding if and only if no zig-zag path crosses itself, and no two zig-zag paths cross each other more than once.

### 2.3 Critical weights

Suppose we have a isoradial embedding of $`𝒢`$. For each edge $`e`$ of $`𝒢`$ define $`\nu (e)=2\mathrm{sin}\theta `$ and $`c(e)=\mathrm{tan}\theta `$, where $`2\theta `$ is the angle of the rhombus $`R(e)`$ at the vertices it has in common with $`e`$. We refer to $`\theta `$ as the half-angle of $`R`$. The function $`\nu `$ is the weight function for the $`\overline{}`$ matrix and $`c`$ is the weight function (conductance) for the Laplacian matrix. A weight function $`\nu `$ or $`c`$ which arises in this way is called critical. Note that $`\nu (e)`$ is the length of $`e^{}`$, the dual edge of $`e`$.

Note that a critical weight function determines the embedding of $`𝒢`$ and $`𝒢^{}`$.

It is useful to allow the rhombus half-angles to be in $`[0,\pi /2]`$, that is, to allow degenerate rhombi with half-angles $`0`$ or $`\pi /2`$. In this case the embeddings of $`𝒢`$ or $`𝒢^{}`$ can be degenerate in the sense that two or more vertices may map to the same point.

If the half-angles of the rhombi in a chain are in $`[0,\pi /2]`$ but bounded away from $`0`$ and $`\pi /2`$ we can deform the angles of all the rhombi in the chain, simply by changing slightly the direction of the common parallel edge. The new rhombus angles define a new critical weight function. Moreover one can show that every critical weight function can be obtained from any other by deforming in this way along chains: see section 8.

### 2.4 Periodic graphs

For the rest of the paper we suppose that $`𝒢`$ is an infinite periodic graph, that is, the embedding (and therefore the weight function) is invariant by translates by a two-dimensional lattice $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ in $`^2`$, and the quotient $`𝒢/\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is finite. We denote this quotient $`𝒢_1`$.

We use periodicity in a fundamental way in defining and proving the formulas for the determinants, Theorems 1.1 and 1.2. For the inverses of the operators, however, periodicity is not necessary. As long as the graph has a reasonable regularity, for example if there are only a finite number of rhombus angles, then the results on the inverses extend (with essentially no modifications to the proofs).

## 3 The $`\overline{}`$ operator

### 3.1 Definition

Let $`𝒢_D`$ be a bipartite planar graph, that is, the vertices of $`𝒢_D`$ can be divided into two subsets $`BW`$ and vertices in $`B`$ (the black vertices) are only adjacent to vertices in $`W`$ (the white vertices) and vice versa. Suppose that $`𝒢_D`$ has an isoradial embedding. Let $`\nu `$ be a critical weight function on $`𝒢_D`$.

We define a symmetric matrix $`\overline{}`$ indexed by the vertices of $`𝒢_D`$ as follows. If $`v_1`$ and $`v_2`$ are not adjacent $`\overline{}(v_1,v_2)=0`$. If $`w`$ and $`b`$ are adjacent vertices, $`w`$ being white and $`b`$ black, then $`\overline{}(w,b)=\overline{}(b,w)`$ is the complex number of length $`\nu (wb)`$ and direction pointing from $`w`$ to $`b`$. If $`w`$ and $`b`$ have the same image in the plane then the $`|\overline{}(w,b)|=2`$, and the direction of $`\overline{}(w,b)`$ is that which is perpendicular to the corresponding dual edge (which has nonzero length by definition), and has sign determined by the local orientation. Another useful way to say this is as follows. If rhombus $`R(wb)`$ has vertices $`w,x,b,y`$ in counterclockwise (cclw) order then $`\overline{}(w,b)`$ is $`i`$ times the complex vector $`xy`$.

The matrix $`\overline{}`$ defines the $`\overline{}`$ operator. The $`\overline{}`$ matrix is also called a Kasteleyn matrix for the underlying dimer model, see section 10. Since $`\overline{}`$ maps $`^B`$ to $`^W`$ and $`^W`$ to $`^B`$, it really consists of two operators $`\overline{}_{BW}:^B^W`$ and its transpose $`\overline{}_{WB}:^W^B.`$

As an example, note that when $`𝒢_D=^2`$ with edge lengths $`r=\sqrt{2}`$ the $`\overline{}`$ operator has a more recognizable form,

$$\overline{}f(v):=\sqrt{2}\left(f(v+r)f(vr)+if(v+ri)if(vri)\right).$$

### 3.2 Discrete analytic functions and perturbations

A function $`f:B`$ satisfying $`\overline{}f0`$, that is $`_{bB}\overline{}(w,b)f(b)=0`$ for all $`w`$, is called a discrete analytic function. This generalizes the definition given in . Similarly a function $`f:W`$ satisfying $`\overline{}f0`$ is also called a discrete analytic function. So a critical bipartite planar graph supports two independent families of discrete analytic functions.

The simplest example of a discrete analytic function is a constant function (as the reader may check).

A discrete analytic function $`F:B`$ defines a perturbation of the embedding of $`𝒢_D^{}`$, as follows (this idea generalizes an example in ). The perturbation is a complex homothety (rotation, scaling and translation) on each black face but deforms the white faces in a more general way. See Figure 2.

The perturbation is defined as follows. Fix a small $`ϵ>0`$. To each face $`b^{}`$ of $`𝒢_D^{}`$ we apply the map $`zz(1+ϵF(b))+t_b`$, where $`t_b`$ is a certain translation. The $`t_b`$ are chosen so that if two black faces meet at a vertex, their images still meet at the (image of the) same vertex. This is of course only possible if for each white face the polygonal path formed by the translates of the images of its edges is still a closed polygon: let $`w`$ be a white vertex of $`𝒢_D`$, and $`b_1,\mathrm{},b_m`$ its neighboring black vertices. Let $`e_1^{},\mathrm{},e_m^{}`$ be the edges running cclw around the face $`w^{}`$ of $`𝒢_D^{}`$, so that $`e_j^{}`$ is the dual edge to $`wb_j`$. Because the edges and dual edges are perpendicular, as a complex vector we have $`e_j^{}=i\overline{}(w,b_j)`$. Then $`\overline{}F=0`$ implies that

$$\overline{}(w,b_1)F(b_1)+\mathrm{}+\overline{}(w,b_m)F(b_m)=0,$$

or

$$e_1^{}F(b_1)+\mathrm{}+e_m^{}F(b_m)=0$$
(2)
and since $`e_1^{}+\mathrm{}+e_m^{}=0`$, we have

$$e_1^{}(1+ϵF(b_1))+\mathrm{}+e_m^{}(1+ϵF(b_m))=0.$$
(3)
In conclusion we can find $`t_b`$ so that each white face is again a closed polygon.

The inverse $`\overline{}^1(w,b)`$ which we define in the next section is a discrete analytic function of $`b`$ for each fixed $`w`$, except for a single singularity: it satisfies

$$\underset{bB}{}\overline{}(w^{},b)\overline{}^1(w,b)=\delta _w^{}(w)=\{\begin{array}{cc}0\hfill & \text{if }ww^{}\hfill \\ 1\hfill & \text{if }w=w^{}\hfill \end{array}.$$

Therefore for a fixed $`w`$ it defines a perturbation of the embedding except that the polygon $`w^{}`$ is not closed: at the face $`w^{}`$ the right-hand side of (2) is $`1`$ not $`0`$. So we can therefore define only a map from the branched cover of $`𝒢_D^{}`$, branched around $`w`$, to $``$; it has a non-trivial holonomy around $`w`$. See Figure 3 for $`\overline{}^1`$ in the case $`𝒢_D=^2`$.

## 4 The $`\overline{}^1`$ operator

For critical bipartite graphs $`𝒢_D`$ we define $`\overline{}^1`$ to be the unique function satisfying

1. $`\overline{}\overline{}^1=Id`$
2. $`\overline{}^1(w,b)0`$ when $`|bw|\mathrm{}`$.

We first show unicity, then existence in the following section.

### 4.1 Unicity

###### Theorem 4.1

There is at most one $`\overline{}^1`$ satisfying the above two properties.

Proof: We first show that for all $`w,b`$ the argument of $`\overline{}^1(w,b)`$ is well defined up to additive multiples of $`\pi `$. To do this we conjugate $`\overline{}`$ by a diagonal unitary matrix to make it real. This conjugation simply involves multiplying the edge weights on edges incident to each vertex by a constant (a constant depending on the vertex).

Fix a vertex $`v_0`$ of $`𝒢_D`$. Let $`v`$ be any other vertex of $`𝒢_D`$ and $`v_0,v_1,\mathrm{},v_{2k}=v`$ be a path of rhombus edges from $`v_0`$ to $`v`$. Each edge $`v_jv_{j+1}`$ has exactly one vertex of $`𝒢_D`$ (the other is a vertex of $`𝒢_D^{}`$). Direct the edge away from this vertex if it is white, and towards this vertex if it is black. Let $`e^{i\alpha _j}`$ be the corresponding vector (which may point contrary to the direction of the path from $`v_0`$ to $`v`$). We multiply all the edges incident to $`v`$ with weight $`s_v=\pm e^{\frac{i}{2}{\scriptscriptstyle \alpha _j}}`$ (either choice of sign will do). Note that these multipliers are well-defined up to $`\pm 1`$: the product of the multipliers on a path surrounding a rhombus is $`\pm 1`$. Let $`S`$ be the diagonal matrix of these weights (with an arbitrary choice of signs). Then we claim that each entry of $`S^{}\overline{}S`$ is real: if $`w,b`$ are adjacent in $`𝒢_D`$, and $`e^{i\theta },e^{i\varphi }`$ are the edge vectors of the rhombus edge $`R(wb)`$, so that $`\overline{}(w,b)=i(e^{i\theta }+e^{i\varphi }),`$ then

$$S^{}\overline{}S(w,b)=s_w^{}s_b\overline{}(w,b)=\pm s_w^{}(s_we^{i(\theta +\varphi )/2})(i(e^{i\theta }+e^{i\varphi })).$$

We now claim that $`S^{}\overline{}S`$ has at most one inverse tending to zero at infinity. If $`F_1,F_2`$ are two such inverses, then $`F_1F_2`$ satisfies $`S^{}\overline{}S(F_1F_2)0`$. Moreover by reality of $`S^{}\overline{}S`$ we can suppose $`F_1F_2`$ is real (otherwise take the real or imaginary parts separately).

Let $`w_0`$ be a fixed white vertex of $`𝒢_D`$. As in section 3.2 we associate to each black vertex $`b`$ a polygon similar to the face $`b^{}`$ of $`𝒢_D^{}`$. That is we associate a translate of $`[S(F_1F_2)S^{}(w_0,b)]b^{}`$. These translates are chosen so that if polygons $`b_1^{},b_2^{}`$ meet at a vertex then their images meet at the the image of the same vertex. For each white face $`w^{}`$ of $`𝒢_D^{}`$, the images of its edges all have the same direction: if $`b`$ is a neighbor of $`w`$ then the dual edge $`(wb)^{}=e^{i\theta }e^{i\varphi }`$ is mapped to the vector

$$(e^{i\theta }e^{i\varphi })S(F_1F_2)S^{}(b,w_0)=(e^{i\theta }e^{i\varphi })(s_we^{i(\theta +\varphi )/2})s_{w_0}^{},$$

which is $`s_{w_0}^{}s_w`$ times a real number. Hence up to $`\pm 1`$ the direction is independent of the choice of neighbor $`b`$ of $`w`$. The image of these edges is therefore a segment. Thus we have a map from $`𝒢_D^{}`$ to the plane, such that each black face is mapped to a similar copy of itself (positively oriented) and each white face is mapped to a segment. Each such segment has a neighborhood in $`^2`$ of its interior covered by the images of its neighboring black faces. If $`(F_1F_2)(b,w_0)`$ is non-zero at some $`b`$, the image of this map is open, since the image extends across the boundary of each black polygon. But this is impossible if $`F_1F_2`$ tends to zero at $`\mathrm{}`$. $`\mathrm{}`$

### 4.2 Existence

For a critical weight function $`\nu `$ on a bipartite graph $`𝒢_D`$ we have the following explicit description of $`\overline{}^1`$.

Let $`w_0`$ be a white vertex. Define for every vertex $`v`$ a rational function $`f_v(z)`$ as follows. Let $`w_0=v_0,v_1,v_2,\mathrm{},v_k=v`$ be a path in the rhombus tiling from $`w_0`$ to $`v`$. Each edge $`v_jv_{j+1}`$ has exactly one vertex of $`𝒢_D`$ (the other is a vertex of $`𝒢_D^{}`$). Direct the edge away from this vertex if it is white, and towards this vertex if it is black. Let $`e^{i\alpha _j}`$ be the corresponding vector (which may point contrary to the direction of the path). We define $`f_v`$ inductively along the path, starting from

$$f_{v_0}=1.$$
(4)
If the edge $`v_jv_{j+1}`$ leads away from a white vertex or towards a black vertex, then

$$f_{v_{j+1}}=\frac{f_{v_j}}{(ze^{i\alpha _j})},$$
(5)
else if it leads towards a white or away from a black, then

$$f_{v_{j+1}}=f_{v_j}(ze^{i\alpha _j}).$$
(6)
To see that $`f_v(z)`$ is well-defined, it suffices to show that the multipliers for a path around a rhombus come out to $`1`$. For a rhombus $`R(wb)`$ with vertices $`w,x,b,y`$ such that the vector $`wx`$ is $`e^{i\theta }`$ and the vector $`wy`$ is $`e^{i\varphi }`$, we have

$$f_w(z)=f_y(z)(ze^{i\varphi })=f_b(z)(ze^{i\theta })(ze^{i\varphi })=f_x(z)(ze^{i\theta }).$$

This shows that $`f`$ is well-defined.

Any function $`f_v(z)`$ satisfying (5),(6) (but not necessarily (4)) is a discrete analytic function for $`𝒢_D`$, see Theorem 9.1 below. We call such functions special discrete analytic functions.

For a black vertex $`b`$ the coupling function $`\overline{}^1(w_0,b)`$ is defined roughly as the sum over the poles of $`f_b(z)`$ of the residue of $`f_b`$ times the angle of $`z`$ at the pole. However there is an ambiguity in the choice of angle, which is only defined up to a multiple of $`2\pi `$.

To make this definition precise, we have to assign angles (in $``$, not in $`[0,2\pi )`$) to the poles of $`f_b(z)`$. We work on the branched cover of the plane, branched over $`w_0`$, so that for each black vertex $`b`$ in this cover we can assign a real angle $`\theta _0`$ to the complex vector $`bw_0`$, which increases by $`2\pi `$ when $`b`$ winds once around $`w_0`$. Each pole of $`f_b`$ corresponds to a rhombus chain separating $`b`$ from $`w_0`$, with $`b`$ being on the black side of the chain. Because the chain is monotone we can assign an angle to the common parallel (recall that this points from the white side to the black side of the chain) which is in $`(\theta _0\pi ,\theta _0+\pi )`$. This assigns a real angle to each pole of $`f_b`$.

###### Theorem 4.2

We have

$$\overline{}^1(w_0,b)=\frac{1}{2\pi i}\underset{\text{poles }e^{i\theta }}{}\theta \text{Res}_{z=e^{i\theta }}(f_b),$$
(7)
where the angles $`\theta `$ are chosen as above for some lift of $`b`$. This can be written

$$\frac{1}{4\pi ^2i}_Cf_b(z)\mathrm{log}zdz,$$

where $`C`$ is a closed contour surrounding cclw the part of the circle $`\{e^{i\theta }|\theta [\theta _0\pi +ϵ,\theta _0+\pi ϵ]\}`$ which contains all the poles of $`f_b`$, and with the origin in its exterior.

Proof: Let $`F(b)`$ denote the right-hand side of (7). Note that if we choose a different lift of $`b`$, the angles all change by a constant multiple of $`2\pi `$; however the sum of all residues of $`f`$ is zero since $`f_b(z)`$ has a double zero at $`\mathrm{}`$. Therefore the right-hand side is independent of the lift of $`b`$.

We need to show that $`_{bB}\overline{}(w,b)F(b)=\delta _{w_0}(w)`$, and $`F(b)`$ tends to zero when $`b\mathrm{}`$ (see section 4.1).

Take a white vertex $`w`$, $`ww_0`$, and let $`b_1,\mathrm{},b_k`$ be the neighbors of $`w`$. Let $`e^{i\theta _j},e^{i\varphi _j}`$ be the edges of $`R(w,b_j)`$, so that $`\overline{}(w,b_j)=i(e^{i\theta _j}+e^{i\varphi _j})`$. For each pole $`e^{i\theta }`$ of some $`f_{b_j}`$, the value of the angle $`\theta `$ is the same for each of the $`b_j`$ (they are part of the same chain for which $`e^{i\theta }`$ is the common parallel). Let $`C_\theta `$ be a small loop around $`e^{i\theta }`$ in $``$. We have

$`{\displaystyle \underset{bB}{}}\overline{}(w,b)F(b)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{k}{}}}i(e^{i\theta _j}+e^{i\varphi _j})F(b_j),`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi i}}{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{k}{}}}i(e^{i\theta _j}+e^{i\varphi _j}){\displaystyle \underset{\text{poles }e^{i\theta }}{}}\theta \text{Res}_{z=e^{i\theta }}(f_{b_j})`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi }}{\displaystyle \underset{\text{poles }e^{i\theta }}{}}\theta {\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{k}{}}}(e^{i\theta _j}+e^{i\varphi _j}){\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi i}}{\displaystyle _{C_\theta }}f_{b_j}(z)𝑑z`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi }}{\displaystyle \underset{\text{poles }e^{i\theta }}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{2\pi i}}{\displaystyle _{C_\theta }}f_w(z){\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{k}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{(e^{i\theta _j}+e^{i\varphi _j})}{(ze^{i\theta _j})(ze^{i\varphi _j})}}dz`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi }}{\displaystyle \underset{\text{poles }e^{i\theta }}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{2\pi i}}{\displaystyle _{C_\theta }}f_w(z)\left({\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{k}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(ze^{i\varphi _j})}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(ze^{i\theta _j})}}\right)𝑑z`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi }}{\displaystyle \underset{\text{poles }e^{i\theta }}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{2\pi i}}{\displaystyle _{C_\theta }}0𝑑z=0.`$
However when $`w=w_0`$ we have

$$F(b_j)=\frac{1}{2\pi i}\left(\frac{\theta _j\varphi _j}{e^{i\theta _j}e^{i\varphi _j}}\right),$$

so that

$$\underset{j=1}{\overset{k}{}}i(e^{i\theta _j}+e^{i\varphi _j})F(b_j)=\frac{1}{2\pi }\underset{j=1}{\overset{k}{}}\theta _j\varphi _j=1,$$

since the angles increase by $`2\pi `$ around $`w_0`$.

Finally to show that $`F(b)`$ tends to zero see Theorem 4.3 below. $`\mathrm{}`$

### 4.3 Asymptotics of $`\overline{}^1`$

Let $`w=v_0,v_1,\mathrm{},v_{2k}=b`$ be a path of rhombus edges from $`w`$ to $`b`$ which crosses each rhombus chain at most once. Such a path exists since two chains cross each other at most once. Every vertex $`v_{2j}`$ is a vertex of $`𝒢_D`$, and the edges coming to and leaving $`v_{2j}`$ contribute a pole and a zero to $`f_b`$ (we are assuming $`f_w(z)=1`$). So $`f_b(z)`$ has the form

$$f_b(z)=\frac{1}{(ze^{i\theta _1})(ze^{i\theta _2})}\underset{j=1}{\overset{k1}{}}\frac{(ze^{i\alpha _j})}{(ze^{i\beta _j})}.$$

By periodicity of $`𝒢_D`$, the angles $`\beta _j`$ are all in $`[\theta _0\pi +ϵ,\theta _0+\pi ϵ]`$ for some fixed $`ϵ>0`$ independent of $`w,b`$.

###### Theorem 4.3

We have

$$\overline{}^1(w,b)=\frac{1}{2\pi }\left(\frac{1}{bw}+\frac{\gamma }{(\overline{b}\overline{w})}\right)+\frac{1}{2\pi }\left(\frac{\xi _2}{(bw)^3}+\frac{\overline{\xi }_2}{\gamma (\overline{b}\overline{w})^3}\right)+O\left(\frac{1}{|bw|^3}\right),$$

where $`\gamma =f_b(0)=e^{i(\theta _1+\theta _2)}e^{i(\beta _j+\alpha _j)}`$ and $`\xi _2=e^{2i\theta _1}+e^{2i\theta _2}+e^{2i\beta _j}e^{2i\alpha _j}`$ in the above notation.

Proof: By Theorem 4.2, $`\overline{}^1(w,b)`$ is given by an integral

$$\frac{1}{(2\pi )^2i}_Cf_b(z)\mathrm{log}zdz$$

on a simple closed curve $`C`$ which surrounds in a cclw sense the set $`\{e^{i\theta }:\theta [\theta _0\pi +ϵ,\theta _0+\pi ϵ]\}`$ and has the origin in its exterior. In fact since $`f`$ tends to zero at $`\mathrm{}`$ we can homotope $`C`$ to the curve from $`\mathrm{}`$ to the origin and back to $`\mathrm{}`$ along the two sides of the ray $`R`$ from the origin in direction $`\theta _0+\pi `$. On the two sides of this ray, $`\mathrm{log}z`$ differs by $`2\pi i`$: it is $`2\pi i`$ less on the cclw side, and the integral therefore becomes

$$\frac{1}{2\pi }_Rf_b(z)𝑑z,$$

the integral being from $`\mathrm{}`$ to $`0`$ along $`R`$.

We show that when $`|bw|`$ is large the only contributions to this integral come from a neighborhood of the origin and from a neighborhood of $`\mathrm{}`$. Suppose without loss of generality that $`\theta _0=0`$, so that $`R`$ is the negative real axis. Define

$$N=|bw|=|e^{i\theta _1}+e^{i\theta _2}+\underset{j=1}{\overset{k1}{}}e^{i\beta _j}e^{i\alpha _j}|.$$

For small $`t`$ we have

$$\frac{te^{i\alpha }}{te^{i\beta }}=\frac{e^{i\alpha }}{e^{i\beta }}\mathrm{exp}\left((e^{i\beta }e^{i\alpha })t+(e^{2i\beta }e^{2i\alpha })t^2/2+O(t^3)\right),$$

giving

$$f_b(t)=\gamma \mathrm{exp}\left((\overline{b}\overline{w})t+\overline{\xi _2}\frac{t^2}{2}+O(t^3)\right).$$
(8)
Since $`\beta [\pi +ϵ,\pi ϵ]`$, we have $`\mathrm{cos}\beta >1\delta `$ for some fixed $`\delta =\delta (ϵ)`$. For all $`t<0`$ we can use the bound

$`\left|{\displaystyle \frac{te^{i\alpha }}{te^{i\beta }}}\right|`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{t^2+12t\mathrm{cos}\alpha }{t^2+12t\mathrm{cos}\beta }}}`$
$``$ $`\sqrt{1+{\displaystyle \frac{2t(\mathrm{cos}\beta \mathrm{cos}\alpha )}{t^2+12t(1\delta )}}}`$
$``$ $`\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{t(\mathrm{cos}\beta \mathrm{cos}\alpha )}{t^2+12t(1\delta )}}\right),`$
which gives

$$|f_b(t)|\frac{e^{\frac{t}{t^2+12t(1\delta )}{\scriptscriptstyle \mathrm{cos}\beta _j}\mathrm{cos}\alpha _j}}{|(te^{i\theta _1})(te^{i\theta _2})|}e^{t(N2)/(1+t^22t(1\delta ))}.$$
(9)
For large $`t`$ we have

$$\frac{te^{i\alpha }}{te^{i\beta }}=\frac{1e^{i\alpha }/t}{1e^{i\beta }/t}=\mathrm{exp}\left((e^{i\beta }e^{i\alpha })\frac{1}{t}+(e^{2i\beta }e^{2i\alpha })\frac{1}{2t^2}+O(\frac{1}{t^3})\right),$$

which gives

$$f_b(t)=e^{(bw)/t+\xi _2/(2t^2)+O(t^3)}.$$
(10)
When $`1/\sqrt{N}t0`$, we can use the approximation (8), when $`N^{1/2}t1/\sqrt{N}`$ we can use (9) and when $`tN^{1/2}`$ we can use (10).

The small-$`|t|`$ integral gives

$$\frac{\gamma }{2\pi }_{1/\sqrt{N}}^0e^{t(\overline{b}\overline{w})+\overline{\xi }_2t^2/2+O(Nt^3)}𝑑t=\frac{\gamma }{2\pi }\left(\frac{1}{\overline{b}\overline{w}}+\frac{\overline{\xi }_2}{(\overline{b}\overline{w})^3}\right)+O(\frac{1}{N^3}).$$

The intermediate integral is negligible, and the large-$`t`$ integral gives

$$\frac{1}{2\pi }_{\mathrm{}}^{N^{1/2}}\frac{1}{t^2}e^{(bw)/t+\xi _2/2t^2+O(N/t^3)}𝑑t=\frac{1}{2\pi }\left(\frac{1}{bw}+\frac{\xi _2}{(bw)^3}\right)+O(\frac{1}{N^3}).$$

$`\mathrm{}`$

## 5 Determinants

For a finite graph $`𝒢`$ we define the normalized determinant $`det_1M`$ of an operator $`M:^𝒢^𝒢`$ to be

$$\text{det}_1M\stackrel{\text{def}}{=}|detM|^{1/|𝒢|},$$

where $`|𝒢|`$ is the number of vertices of $`𝒢`$.

For an operator $`M`$ on a finite graph, $`detM`$ is a function of the matrix entries $`M(i,j)`$ which is linear in each entry separately. In particular for an edge $`e=ij`$, as a function of the matrix entry $`M(i,j)`$ we have $`detM=\alpha +\beta M(i,j)`$, where $`\beta `$ is $`(1)^{i+j}`$ times the determinant of the minor obtained by removing row $`i`$ and column $`j`$. That is,

$$\frac{(detM)}{(M(i,j))}=M^1(j,i)detM,$$

or

$$\frac{(\mathrm{log}detM)}{M(i,j)}=M^1(j,i).$$
(11)
Suppose that $`𝒢`$ is periodic under translates by a lattice $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. Let $`𝒢_n=𝒢/n\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, the finite graph which is the quotient of $`𝒢`$ by $`n\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. Now if we sum (11) for all $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-translates of edge $`ij`$ in $`𝒢_n`$, and then divide both sides by $`|𝒢_n|`$, it yields

$$\frac{(\mathrm{log}det_1M)}{M(i,j)}=\frac{1}{|𝒢_1|}M^1(j,i),$$
(12)
where $`M(i,j)`$ is now the common weight of all translates of edge $`ij`$, that is, the left-hand side is the change in $`\mathrm{log}det_1M`$ when the weight of all translates of $`ij`$ changes. Note that this equation is independent of $`n`$.

We can now use (12) to define the normalized determinant of $`\overline{}`$ on an infinite periodic graph $`𝒢_D`$ in terms of $`\overline{}^1`$. Rather, it defines the change in the normalized determinant. To complete the definition we need to define the normalized determinant of the $`\overline{}`$ operator at some initial condition. If the half-angles of a graph degenerate by tending to $`0`$ or $`\pi /2`$, the edge weights tend to either $`0`$ or $`2`$. The edges with weight $`0`$ contribute nothing, the edge of weight $`2`$ each are defined to contribute $`\sqrt{2}`$ to the normalized determinant. Thus we define the limit of $`\mathrm{log}det_1\overline{}`$ to be $`\frac{n}{2|𝒢_1|}\mathrm{log}2`$, where $`n`$ is the number of edges per fundamental domain with weight $`2`$. This makes sense since under this degeneration, removing the zero weight edges, the graph consists of copies of $``$, each consisting of weight $`2`$ edges.

Proof of Theorem 1.2:  Suppose $`𝒢_D`$ is periodic with lattice $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. Take a rhombus chain and all its $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-translates in $`𝒢_D`$. Let $`\varphi _0`$ be the smallest half-angle of a rhombus on these chains, and $`\varphi _1`$ the largest half-angle: they exist by periodicity. If $`\varphi _0\pi /2\varphi _1`$, deform these chains by changing the common parallels to decrease $`\varphi _0`$ to zero: at that point the corresponding edge weight is zero and we can remove the edge completely from $`𝒢_D`$, simplifying the graph in the process. If on the other hand $`\pi /2\varphi _1<\varphi _0`$, deform the chain by increasing $`\varphi _1`$ to $`\pi /2`$. At this point the rhombus $`R_1`$ of angle $`\varphi _1`$ has flattened out to become a segment. We now repeat with another chain, but in future deformations we always keep $`R_1`$ as a segment: the angle $`\varphi _1`$ remains $`\pi /2`$. We need to show that this is always possible. If we deform along a chain or union of chains whose common parallels do not contain an edge of $`R_1`$, the deformation will not affect $`R_1`$. If an edge of $`R_1`$ is in the common parallel of a chain being deformed, we deform simultaneously and in the same direction both chains which pass through $`R_1`$. So a deformation involves changing the common angle of parallels of chains, all of which have a parallel in the same direction. We can deform in this way because for any set of chains having parallels in the same direction, there is a deformation which tilts all the common parallels and is a translation on each complementary component of these chains. We continue deforming until all angles are zero or $`\pi /2`$. We have proved that any rhombus tiling of the plane can be deformed through rhombus tilings to flatten out all the rhombi: the rhombus vertices all map to $``$, the rhombus edges map to edges of $``$, and the edges of $`𝒢_D`$ either have length $`2`$ (and weight zero) or length $`0`$ (and weight $`2`$).

We can compute the change in $`\mathrm{log}det_1\overline{}`$ as in (12) under such a deformation since it only depends on the angles of the rhombi in the chains.

To complete the calculation it suffices to compute the contribution for a deformation along a single chain. In fact we can treat each rhombus of the chain separately. Suppose we deform a chain whose common parallel is $`e^{2i\theta }`$. Suppose the rhombus $`R(wb)`$ has edges $`e^{i\alpha }`$ and $`e^{i(\alpha +2\theta )}`$ leading away from $`w`$. Then the term in

$$|𝒢_1|\frac{d\mathrm{log}det_1\overline{}}{d\theta }$$

which involves this rhombus is

$`|𝒢_1|{\displaystyle \frac{d(\mathrm{log}det_1\overline{})}{d(\overline{}(w,b))}}{\displaystyle \frac{d(\overline{}(w,b))}{d\theta }}`$ $`=`$ $`\overline{}^1(w,b){\displaystyle \frac{d(\overline{}(w,b))}{d\theta }}`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi i}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{2\theta }{e^{i(\alpha +2\theta )}e^{i\alpha }}}\right){\displaystyle \frac{d}{d\theta }}(i(e^{i(\alpha +2\theta )}+e^{i\alpha }))`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\theta e^{i\theta }}{\pi \mathrm{sin}\theta }}.`$
Suppose in the above deformations this rhombus has half-angle going to zero. Integrating the real part of this for $`\theta `$ from $`0`$ to $`\varphi `$ yields

$$\frac{1}{\pi }_0^\varphi \theta \mathrm{cot}\theta d\theta =\frac{\varphi }{\pi }\mathrm{log}\mathrm{sin}\varphi \frac{1}{\pi }_0^\varphi \mathrm{log}\mathrm{sin}\theta d\theta $$

(integrating by parts), which is

$$=\frac{\varphi }{\pi }\mathrm{log}2\mathrm{sin}\varphi +\frac{1}{\pi }L(\varphi ).$$

On the other hand if the rhombus half-angle goes to $`\pi /2`$, we should integrate from $`\pi `$ down to $`\varphi `$. This yields

$$\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{log}2+\frac{\varphi }{\pi }\mathrm{log}2\mathrm{sin}\varphi +\frac{1}{\pi }L(\varphi ),$$

since when $`\varphi =\pi /2`$ we have

$$\frac{\varphi }{\pi }\mathrm{log}2\mathrm{sin}\varphi +\frac{1}{\pi }L(\varphi )=\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{log}2.$$

This completes the proof. $`\mathrm{}`$

Note that for $`^2`$ in its standard embedding this gives the classical result of Kasteleyn , except for an extra factor $`\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{log}2`$ per edge since our edge weights are $`\nu (e)=\sqrt{2}`$, not $`1`$.

A more classical way of defining the normalized determinant is via an exhaustion of $`𝒢_D`$ by finite graphs. On an infinite graph $`𝒢_{\mathrm{}}`$ which is a limit of a growing sequence of finite graphs $`𝒢_{\mathrm{}}=lim_n\mathrm{}𝒢_n`$, and supposing that an operator $`M_{\mathrm{}}`$ on $`𝒢_{\mathrm{}}`$ is a limit in an appropriate sense of $`M_n`$ on $`G_n`$, one would wish to define $`det_1M_{\mathrm{}}\stackrel{def}{=}lim_n\mathrm{}det_1M_n,`$ assuming this limit exists. Unfortunately it is not so easy to prove that the limit exists in the case of the operator $`\overline{}`$, even when the graph is $`^2`$ with periodic weights: see . That is why we chose the previous definition instead.

## 6 Relating the Laplacian to $`\overline{}`$

Let $`𝒢_T`$ be a planar graph (not necessarily bipartite) with an isoradial embedding in the plane. To an edge $`e`$ with rhombus angle $`2\theta [0,\pi ]`$ we associate a weight $`c(e)=\mathrm{tan}\theta `$. This weight $`c(e)`$ is the conductance in the underlying electrical network. This is the situation considered in .

Given $`𝒢_T`$ we define another graph $`𝒢_D`$ to be the superposition of $`𝒢_T`$ and its dual, that is, $`𝒢_D`$ has a vertex for each vertex, edge and face of $`𝒢_T`$, and an edge for each half-edge of $`𝒢_T`$ and each half dual-edge as well. See Figure 4. The graph $`𝒢_D`$ is a bipartite planar graph, with black vertices of two types: vertices of $`𝒢_T`$ and vertices of $`𝒢_T^{}`$, and white vertices of $`𝒢_D`$ correspond to the edges of $`𝒢_T`$.

An isoradial embedding of $`𝒢_T`$ gives rise to an isoradial embedding of $`𝒢_D`$: each rhombus of $`𝒢_T`$ with half-angle $`\theta `$ is divided into four congruent rhombi in $`𝒢_D`$, two of half-angle $`\theta `$ and two of half-angle $`\frac{\pi }{2}\theta `$: see Figure 4.

An edge of $`𝒢_T`$ of rhombus half-angle $`\theta `$ has weight $`c(e)=\mathrm{tan}\theta `$. This defines weight $`\mathrm{tan}\theta `$ on the two “halves” of each edge in $`𝒢_T𝒢_T^{}`$ (which are edges of $`G_D`$), and the dual edges are naturally weighted $`1`$ (as in ).

The $`\overline{}`$ operator on $`𝒢_D`$ and the Laplacian on $`𝒢_T`$ are related as follows. Let $`\overline{D}`$ be obtained from $`\overline{}`$ by multiplying edge weights of $`𝒢_D`$ around each white vertex (coming from an edge of $`𝒢_T`$ of half-angle $`\theta `$) by $`1/(2\sqrt{\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{cos}\theta })`$, that is, $`\overline{D}(w,b)=S\overline{}(w,b)S^{}`$ where $`S`$ is the diagonal matrix defined by $`S(w,w)=1/(2\sqrt{\mathrm{sin}\theta (w)\mathrm{cos}\theta (w)})`$ and $`S(b,b)=1`$.

Then an edge of $`𝒢_D`$ coming from a “primal” edge of $`𝒢_T`$ has weight $`\sqrt{\mathrm{tan}\theta }`$ for $`\overline{D}`$, and an edge coming from a dual edge has weight $`1/\sqrt{\mathrm{tan}\theta }`$ for $`\overline{D}`$. (These edges have weight $`2\mathrm{sin}\theta ,2\mathrm{cos}\theta `$ respectively for $`\overline{}`$.)

###### Lemma 6.1

Restricted to vertices of $`𝒢_T`$ we have $`\overline{D}^{}\overline{D}=\mathrm{\Delta }_{𝒢_T}.`$ Restricted to faces of $`𝒢_T`$, we have $`\overline{D}^{}\overline{D}=\mathrm{\Delta }_{𝒢_T^{}},`$ the Laplacian on $`𝒢_T^{}`$.

Proof: Let $`b𝒢_T`$ have neighbors $`b_1,\mathrm{},b_k`$ and let $`\theta _i`$ be the half-angle of edge $`bb_i`$. Then in $`𝒢_D`$, $`b`$ has neighbors $`w_1,\mathrm{}w_k`$ with these same half-angles, and $`\overline{D}(b,w_j)=\alpha _j\sqrt{\mathrm{tan}\theta _j}`$ where $`|\alpha _j|=1`$.

We have

$$\overline{D}^{}\overline{D}(b,b)=\underset{j=1}{\overset{k}{}}|\alpha _j\sqrt{\mathrm{tan}\theta _j}|^2=\underset{j=1}{\overset{k}{}}\mathrm{tan}\theta _j=\mathrm{\Delta }(b,b).$$

If $`b,b^{}`$ are adjacent in $`𝒢_T`$ we have

$$\overline{D}^{}\overline{D}(b,b^{})=(\alpha \sqrt{\mathrm{tan}\theta })(\overline{\alpha }\sqrt{\mathrm{tan}\theta })=\mathrm{tan}\theta =\mathrm{\Delta }(b,b^{}).$$

If $`b,b^{}`$ are at distance $`2`$ in $`𝒢_D`$ but correspond to a vertex and a face of $`𝒢_T`$, we have two contributions to $`\overline{D}^{}\overline{D}(b,b^{})`$ which cancel: in $`𝒢_T`$ let $`e_1,e_2`$ be the two edges from $`b`$ bounding the face $`b^{}`$, with $`e_1`$ on the right. Then

$`\overline{D}^{}\overline{D}(b,b^{})`$ $`=`$ $`\overline{D}(b,w_1)\overline{D}^{}(w_1,b^{})+\overline{D}(b,w_2)\overline{D}^{}(w_2,b^{})`$
$`=`$ $`(\alpha _1\sqrt{\mathrm{tan}\theta _1})({\displaystyle \frac{i\overline{\alpha _1}}{\sqrt{\mathrm{tan}\theta _1}}})+(\alpha _2\sqrt{\mathrm{tan}\theta _2})({\displaystyle \frac{i\overline{\alpha _2}}{\sqrt{\mathrm{tan}\theta _2}}})`$
$`=`$ $`0.`$
Finally, if $`b^{}`$ is at distance at least $`2`$ in $`𝒢_T`$, $`\overline{D}^{}\overline{D}(b,b^{})=0`$.

The proof for $`𝒢_T^{}`$ is identical. $`\mathrm{}`$

## 7 Green’s function

As we did for $`\overline{}^1`$ we can give an explicit expression for the Green’s function on a critical graph.

The Green’s function $`G(v,w)`$ is defined to be the function satisfying

1. $`\mathrm{\Delta }G(v,w)=\delta _v(w)`$ (the Laplacian is taken with respect to the second variable),
2. $`G(v,w)=O(\mathrm{log}(|vw|)),`$ and
3. $`G(v,v)=0`$.

We define for each vertex $`v`$ of $`𝒢_T`$ and $`𝒢_T^{}`$ a rational function $`g_v(z)`$ of $`z`$ as follows. We define $`g_v`$ inductively starting from $`g_{v_0}=\frac{1}{z}`$ and if $`v,v^{}`$ are adjacent vertices of a rhombus then

$$g_v^{}=g_v\frac{z+e^{i\theta }}{ze^{i\theta }},$$
(13)
where $`e^{i\theta }`$ is the complex vector from $`v`$ to $`v^{}`$. Now $`g_v`$ is well-defined since the product of the multipliers around a rhombus is $`1`$.

###### Theorem 7.1

$$G(v_0,v_1)=\frac{1}{4\pi i}\underset{\text{poles }e^{i\theta }0}{}\theta \text{Res}_{z=e^{i\theta }}(g_{v_1}(z))=\frac{1}{8\pi ^2i}_Cg_{v_1}(z)\mathrm{log}zdz,$$

where the angles $`\theta `$ and curve $`C`$ are chosen as in Theorem 4.2. For $`v_0𝒢_T`$ and $`v_1𝒢_T^{}`$ this formula defines $`i`$ times the harmonic conjugate of $`G`$.

Proof: The proof is similar to the proof of Theorem 4.2. Clearly $`G(v,v)=0`$ by definition. To show that $`\mathrm{\Delta }G(v,w)=\delta _v(w)`$, we show that for each edge the discrete Cauchy-Riemann equations are satisfied (), that is, we show that for an edge $`vv^{}`$ with half-angle $`\theta `$ and with dual edge $`ww^{}`$, we have

$$(G(v_0,v^{})G(v_0,v))i\mathrm{tan}\theta =G(v_0,w^{})G(v_0,w),$$

assuming $`ww^{}`$ is obtained by turning cclw from $`vv^{}`$. It suffices that for each pole $`e^{i\varphi }`$ we have

$$(g_v^{}(z)g_v(z))i\mathrm{tan}\theta =g_w^{}(z)g_w(z).$$
(14)
By (13), we have

$$g_w^{}(z)=g_v(z)\frac{z+e^{i\alpha }}{ze^{i\alpha }},g_w(z)=g_v(z)\frac{z+e^{i\beta }}{ze^{i\beta }},g_v^{}(z)=g_v(z)\frac{(z+e^{i\alpha })(z+e^{i\beta })}{(ze^{i\alpha })(ze^{i\beta })},$$

so that (14) is

$$g_v(z)\left(\frac{z+e^{i\alpha }}{ze^{i\alpha }}\frac{z+e^{i\beta }}{ze^{i\beta }}1\right)i\mathrm{tan}\frac{\alpha \beta }{2}=g_v(z)\left(\frac{z+e^{i\alpha }}{ze^{i\alpha }}\frac{z+e^{i\beta }}{ze^{i\beta }}\right).$$

This identity holds, therefore $`G(v_0,w)`$ is harmonic for $`wv_0`$. Moreover for a dual vertex $`v^{}`$ adjacent to $`v_0`$ we have

$$g_v^{}(z)=\frac{z+e^{i\alpha }}{z(ze^{i\alpha })},$$

whose residue at $`e^{i\alpha }`$ is $`2`$. Thus the value of $`G(v_0,v)`$ is $`\alpha i/2\pi `$. In particular for one cclw turn around the vertex $`v_0`$, the dual function increases by $`i`$, which implies that the Laplacian at $`v_0`$ is $`1`$. Finally to show that $`G(v,w)=O(\mathrm{log}(|vw|)),`$ see Theorem 7.3 below. $`\mathrm{}`$

From Lemma 6.1 there is a relation between $`G`$ and $`\overline{D}^1`$:

###### Corollary 7.2

When edge $`b_1b_1^{}`$ of $`𝒢_T`$ corresponds to vertex $`w_1`$ of $`𝒢_D`$, we have

$$\frac{1}{\overline{D}^{}(w_1,b_1)}\overline{D}^1(w_1,b_2)=G(b_1,b_2)G(b_1^{},b_2),$$
(15)
Proof: By Lemma 6.1, taking the Laplacian of $`\overline{D}^1(w_1,v)`$ with respect to $`v`$ gives

$`\mathrm{\Delta }_{𝒢_T}\overline{D}^1(w_1,v)`$ $`=`$ $`\overline{D}^{}\overline{D}\overline{D}^1(w_1,v)`$
$`=`$ $`\overline{D}^{}\delta _{w_1}(v)=\overline{D}^{}(w_1,b_1)\left(\delta _{b_1}(v)\delta _{b_1^{}}(v)+{\displaystyle \frac{i}{\mathrm{tan}\theta }}(\delta _{f_1}(v)i\delta _{f_2}(v))\right),`$
where $`f_1,f_2`$ are the two faces adjacent to $`e_1`$. In particular $`\overline{D}^1(w_1,b)`$ is harmonic as a function of $`b𝒢_T`$ except at $`b_1`$ and $`b_1^{}`$, where its Laplacian is $`\pm \overline{D}^{}(w_1,b_1)`$ respectively.

Since $`\overline{D}^1(w_1,b_2)0`$ as $`b_2\mathrm{}`$ this proves (15). $`\mathrm{}`$

### 7.1 Asymptotics of the Green’s function

###### Theorem 7.3

$$G(v_1,v_2)=\frac{1}{2\pi }\mathrm{log}|v_2v_1|\frac{\gamma _{\text{Euler}}}{2\pi }+O(\frac{1}{|v_2v_1|}).$$

Note that our Laplacian is positive semidefinite, which results in the minus sign in this formula.

Proof: Let $`v_0=w_0,w_1,\mathrm{},w_k=v_1`$ be a path of rhombus edges from $`v_0`$ to $`v_1`$. Let $`e^{i\theta _j}`$ be the complex vector from $`w_j`$ to $`w_{j+1}`$. As in the proof of Theorem 4.3 we assume without loss of generality that $`\theta _j[\pi +ϵ,\pi ϵ]`$ for some fixed $`ϵ`$ independent of $`v_1,v_2`$.

Let $`N=|v_1v_0|`$. We take $`r1/N`$ and $`RN`$. We integrate

$$\frac{1}{8\pi ^2i}_C\frac{1}{z}\underset{j=0}{\overset{k1}{}}\frac{z+e^{i\theta _j}}{ze^{i\theta _j}}\mathrm{log}zdz,$$

where $`C`$ is a curve which runs cclw around the ball of radius $`R`$ around the origin, from angle $`\pi `$ to $`\pi `$, then along the negative $`x`$-axis from $`R`$ to $`r`$, then clockwise around the ball of radius $`r`$ from angle $`\pi `$ to $`\pi `$, and then back along the $`x`$-axis from $`r`$ to $`R`$.

The integral around the ball of radius $`r`$ is

$$\frac{1}{8\pi ^2i}_\pi ^\pi (1)^k(1+O(Nr))(\mathrm{log}r+i\theta )i𝑑\theta =\frac{(1)^k\mathrm{log}r}{4\pi }(1+O(Nr)).$$

The difference between the value of $`\mathrm{log}z`$ above and below the $`x`$-axis is $`2\pi i`$, so that we can combine the two parts of the integral along the $`x`$-axis into the integral of

$$\frac{1}{4\pi }_R^r\frac{1}{z}\underset{j=0}{\overset{k1}{}}\frac{z+e^{i\theta _j}}{ze^{i\theta _j}}dz.$$

This integral we split into a part from $`R`$ to $`\sqrt{N}`$, from $`\sqrt{N}`$ to $`1/\sqrt{N}`$ and from $`1/\sqrt{N}`$ to $`r`$.

For small $`t<0`$ we have

$$\underset{j=0}{\overset{k1}{}}\frac{t+e^{i\theta _j}}{te^{i\theta _j}}=(1)^ke^{2{\scriptscriptstyle e^{i\theta _j}t}+O(t^2)}=(1)^ke^{2(\overline{v}_1\overline{v}_0)t+O(t^2)}$$

so that the integral near the origin is

$$\frac{(1)^k}{4\pi }_{1/\sqrt{N}}^r\frac{e^{\overline{\alpha }t+O(t^2)}}{t}𝑑t$$

where $`\alpha =2(v_1v_0),`$

$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(1)^k}{4\pi }}(1+O({\displaystyle \frac{1}{N}})){\displaystyle _{\overline{\alpha }/\sqrt{N}}^{\overline{\alpha }r}}{\displaystyle \frac{e^s}{s}}𝑑s`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(1)^k}{4\pi }}(1+O({\displaystyle \frac{1}{N}}))\left({\displaystyle _{\overline{\alpha }/\sqrt{N}}^1}{\displaystyle \frac{e^s}{s}}𝑑s+{\displaystyle _1^{\overline{\alpha }r}}{\displaystyle \frac{e^s1}{s}}𝑑s+{\displaystyle _1^{\overline{\alpha }r}}{\displaystyle \frac{ds}{s}}\right)`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(1)^k}{4\pi }}\left(\mathrm{log}(r\overline{\alpha })+\gamma _{\text{Euler}}\right)+O({\displaystyle \frac{1}{N}}).`$
The Euler $`\gamma `$ constant $`\gamma _{\text{Euler}}`$ comes from evaluating the first two of these integrals in the limit $`\overline{\alpha }r0`$ and $`\overline{\alpha }/\sqrt{N}\mathrm{}`$.

In the intermediate range the integral is negligible (see the proof of Theorem 4.3). Near $`t=R`$ we have

$$\frac{t+e^{i\theta _j}}{te^{i\theta _j}}=e^{2{\scriptscriptstyle e^{i\theta _j}/t}+O(t^2)}=e^{2(v_1v_0)/t+O(t^2)}$$

so that the integral near $`R`$ is

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\pi }}{\displaystyle _R^\sqrt{N}}{\displaystyle \frac{e^{\alpha /t+O(t^2)}}{t}}𝑑t`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\pi }}{\displaystyle _{R/\alpha }^{\sqrt{N}/\alpha }}{\displaystyle \frac{e^{1/s}}{s}}𝑑s,`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\pi }}\left({\displaystyle _{R/\alpha }^1}{\displaystyle \frac{e^{1/s}1}{s}}𝑑s+{\displaystyle _{R/\alpha }^1}{\displaystyle \frac{ds}{s}}+{\displaystyle _1^{\sqrt{N}/\alpha }}{\displaystyle \frac{e^{1/s}}{s}}\right)`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\pi }}\left(\mathrm{log}(R/\alpha )+\gamma _{\text{Euler}}\right)+O({\displaystyle \frac{1}{N}}),`$
These are precisely the same integrals as in the “near $`r`$” case, under the change of variable $`s1/s`$.

Finally the integral around the ball of radius $`R`$ gives $`\frac{1}{4\pi }\mathrm{log}R`$. The sum is therefore

$$\frac{1}{4\pi }(\mathrm{log}\alpha +(1)^k\mathrm{log}\overline{\alpha })(1+(1)^k)\frac{\gamma _{\text{Euler}}}{4\pi }+O(\frac{1}{N})$$

which when $`k`$ is even is

$$\frac{1}{2\pi }\mathrm{log}|v_1v_0|\frac{\gamma _{\text{Euler}}}{2\pi }+O(\frac{1}{N})=\frac{1}{2\pi }\text{Re}(v_1v_0)\frac{\gamma _{\text{Euler}}}{2\pi }+O(\frac{1}{N})$$

and when $`k`$ is odd it is

$$\frac{1}{4\pi }\mathrm{log}\frac{v_1v_0}{\overline{v}_1\overline{v}_0}+O(\frac{1}{N})=\frac{i}{2\pi }\text{Im}\mathrm{log}(v_1v_0)+O(\frac{1}{N}).$$

$`\mathrm{}`$

### 7.2 Determinant of Laplacian

Using Lemma 6.1 we can compute the determinant of $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ in terms of the determinant of $`\overline{}`$. However it is as simple to compute it directly.

We define the normalized determinant $`det_1\mathrm{\Delta }`$ to be the function of the conductances satisfying, for $`w`$ adjacent to $`v`$,

$$\frac{(\mathrm{log}det_1\mathrm{\Delta })}{(\mathrm{\Delta }(v,w))}=\frac{1}{|𝒢_1|}\left(G(v,v)G(v,w)G(w,v)+G(w,w)\right)=\frac{2G(v,w)}{|𝒢_1|},$$

and for a graph with zero conductances, $`det_1\mathrm{\Delta }:=1`$.

Let $`𝒢_T`$ be a periodic planar graph, periodic under $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ with fundamental domain $`𝒢_T/\mathrm{\Lambda }=𝒢_1`$.

Proof of Theorem 1.1 The method of proof is the same as that of Theorem 1.2. Take a chain of rhombi and all its translates under $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, and change their common parallel, decreasing the smallest angle to zero. If an edge has angle which goes to zero, its conductance goes to $`0`$ as well and so it can be removed from $`𝒢_T`$. Similarly if any rhombus angle increases to $`\pi /2`$, the corresponding conductance becomes infinite and one can remove the corresponding edge, gluing the two vertices together. In this way we can simplify the graph until no edges remain.

However there is a problem which is that the determinant blows up when a conductance goes to $`\mathrm{}`$. So instead we compute the change in the difference

$$:=\mathrm{log}\text{det}_1\mathrm{\Delta }\frac{1}{|𝒢_1|}\underset{e𝒢_1}{}\frac{2\theta }{\pi }\mathrm{log}\mathrm{tan}\theta $$

as we reduce the graph in this manner. (The quantity $``$ is the entropy of the underlying spanning tree model.)

To compute the change under the perturbations we can treat each rhombus independently. For a rhombus $`R(vw)`$ of angle $`2\theta `$, with edges from $`v`$ given by $`e^{i\alpha }`$ and $`e^{i(\alpha +2\theta )}`$, a short calculation yields

$$G(v,w)=\frac{\theta }{\pi \mathrm{tan}\theta },$$

so that the part of $`/\theta `$ involving the rhombus $`R`$ is $`1/|𝒢_1|`$ times

$`2G(v,w){\displaystyle \frac{(\mathrm{\Delta }(v,w))}{\theta }}{\displaystyle \frac{}{\theta }}\left({\displaystyle \frac{2\theta }{\pi }}\mathrm{log}\mathrm{tan}\theta \right)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2\theta }{\pi \mathrm{tan}\theta }}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{tan}\theta }{\theta }}\left({\displaystyle \frac{2\mathrm{log}\mathrm{tan}\theta }{\pi }}+{\displaystyle \frac{2\theta }{\pi \mathrm{tan}\theta \mathrm{cos}^2\theta }}\right)`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2\mathrm{log}\mathrm{tan}\theta }{\pi }}.`$
The integral from $`0`$ to $`\varphi `$ is

$$\frac{2}{\pi }_0^\varphi \mathrm{log}\mathrm{tan}\varphi d\varphi =\frac{2}{\pi }(L(\varphi )+L(\pi /2\varphi )),$$

where we used $`L(\pi /2)=0`$. Similarly the integral from $`\pi /2`$ down to $`\varphi `$ is

$$\frac{2}{\pi }(L(\varphi )+L(\pi /2\varphi )),$$

using $`L(0)=L(\pi /2)=0`$. $`\mathrm{}`$

## 8 Convexity

###### Proposition 8.1

When parametrized by the rhombus angles the set of isoradial embeddings of a graph $`𝒢`$ is convex.

Proof: Each rhombus has angle in $`[0,\pi ]`$. The set of allowed angles is the subset of $`[0,\pi ]^{|E|}`$ defined by the linear constraints that the sum of the angles around each vertex be $`2\pi `$. It is therefore convex. $`\mathrm{}`$

###### Theorem 8.2

A periodic graph which has an isoradial embedding has a unique critical weight function $`\nu `$ maximizing $`det_1\overline{},`$ and a unique critical weight function $`c`$ maximizing $`det_1\mathrm{\Delta }`$.

Proof: Given that the set of critical weight functions is convex, and $`Z:=det_1\overline{}`$ or $`det_1\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is continuous as a function of the rhombus angles, we know that $`Z`$ attains its maximum. To show unicity, it suffices to show that $`\mathrm{log}Z`$ is a strictly concave function of the rhombus angles. Suppose there are $`n`$ rhombi in a fundamental domain. Then $`\mathrm{log}Z`$ is the sum over the rhombi in the fundamental domain of a function depending only on the rhombus angle. Moreover, the functions

$$f_D(\theta )=\frac{1}{\pi }L(\theta )+\frac{\theta }{\pi }\mathrm{log}2\mathrm{sin}\theta $$

and

$$f_T(\theta )=\frac{2}{\pi }\left(L(\theta )+L(\frac{\pi }{2}\theta )\right)+\frac{2\theta }{\pi }\mathrm{log}\mathrm{tan}\theta $$

are strictly concave as a function of $`\theta `$. So we can view $`\mathrm{log}Z`$ as a function on $`[0,\pi ]^n`$ (the set of rhombus angles), subject to the linear restrictions that the sum of the angles around each vertex be $`2\pi `$. Thus $`\mathrm{log}Z`$ is the restriction to a linear subspace of a strictly concave function on $`[0,\pi ]^n`$. As such it is strictly concave and so has a unique maximum. $`\mathrm{}`$

What are the geometric intepretations of these maxima?

## 9 Discretization

Recall that a special discrete analytic function is a function $`f_b(z)`$ satisfying (5) and (6). Note that it is defined by its value at any vertex. Other discret analytic functions can be built up from these by convolutions:

###### Theorem 9.1

Let $`f_b(z)`$ be a special discrete analytic function and $`\mu `$ be any measure in the plane. Then the function $`F(b)=f_b(z)𝑑\mu (z)`$ is a discrete analytic function.

Proof: The proof was already given, in the proof of Theorem 4.2; we repeat it here. Let $`w`$ be a white vertex with neighbors $`b_1,\mathrm{},b_k`$, so that $`R(wb_j)`$ has edges $`e^{i\theta _j}`$ and $`e^{i\varphi _j}`$.

We have

$`{\displaystyle \underset{bB}{}}\overline{}(w,b)F(b)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{k}{}}}i(e^{i\theta _j}+e^{i\varphi _j})F(b_j)`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{k}{}}}i(e^{i\theta _j}+e^{i\varphi _j}){\displaystyle f_{b_j}(z)𝑑\mu (z)}`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle f_w(z)\underset{j=1}{\overset{k}{}}\frac{(e^{i\theta _j}+e^{i\varphi _j})}{(ze^{i\theta _j})(ze^{i\varphi _j})}d\mu (z)}`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle f_w(z)\left(\underset{j=1}{\overset{k}{}}\frac{1}{(ze^{i\varphi _j})}\frac{1}{(ze^{i\theta _j})}\right)𝑑\mu (z)}`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 0𝑑\mu (z)}=0.`$
$`\mathrm{}`$

There is corresponding version for discrete harmonic functions, which also appear in a different form in :

###### Corollary 9.2

On $`𝒢_T`$, let $`h_{v_0}(z)`$ be given and if $`h_v(z)`$ is defined and $`v^{}`$ is adjacent to $`v`$, define

$$h_v^{}(z)=h_v(z)\frac{(z+e^{i\theta })(z+e^{i\varphi })}{(ze^{i\theta })(ze^{i\varphi })},$$

where $`\theta `$ and $`\varphi `$ are the angles of the edges of rhombus $`R(vv^{})`$. This defines $`h_v(z)`$ for all $`v𝒢_T`$, and $`H(v)=h_v(z)𝑑\mu (z)`$ is discrete harmonic.

## 10 The dimer model

### 10.1 Definitions

The dimer model on planar graphs was initiated by Fisher, Kasteleyn and Temperley , who “solved” the model on $`^2`$ by finding a closed-form expression for the partition function.

A dimer covering, or perfect matching, of a graph $`𝒢`$ is a set of edges $`M`$ of $`𝒢`$ which covers every vertex exactly once, that is every vertex is an endpoint of exactly one element of $`M`$. Let $`\nu :E[0,\mathrm{})`$ be a weight function on the edges of $`𝒢`$. To an edge $`e`$ we associate an energy $`\mathrm{log}\nu (e)`$; this defines a natural probability measure $`\mu `$, the Boltzman measure, on the set of all dimer coverings $``$, where the probability of a configuration is proportional to the product of its dimer weights (the exponent of minus the sum of the energies), $`\mu (C)=_{eC}\nu (e)`$. The dimer model is the study of this measure.

The dimer partition function is by definition

$$𝒵(𝒢,\nu )=\underset{M}{}\nu (M).$$

The partition function per site is by definition $`Z=𝒵(𝒢,\nu )^{1/|𝒢|}`$, where $`|𝒢|`$ is the number of vertices of $`𝒢`$.

For infinite graphs one can define the partition function per site by taking limits of the partition functions per site on finite pieces: if $`\{𝒢_n\}`$ is an exhaustion of $`𝒢`$ by finite subgraphs, one can define

$$Z=\underset{n\mathrm{}}{lim}𝒵(𝒢_n,\nu )^{1/|𝒢_n|},$$

when this limit exists. Usually this limit will depend on the sequence $`\{𝒢_n\}`$: see e.g. .

One can also define a probability measure $`\mu `$ on $`(𝒢)`$ which is a weak limit $`\mu =lim_n\mathrm{}\mu _n`$ where $`\mu _n`$ is the Boltzmann measure on $`(𝒢_n)`$, assuming this limit exists. This limit is even more dependent on the sequence than the partition function per site.

One general situation where these limits are known to exist is when $`𝒢_D`$ is of the form $`𝒢_T𝒢_T^{}`$ as described in section 6. For a periodic $`𝒢_T`$ the Green’s functions are known to converge to the corresponding Green’s function on the plane as defined in section 7, see . From corollary 15 we can compute the $`\overline{}^1`$ operator from the Green’s function. In fact in this situation one can exhibit a measure-preserving isomorphism from the dimer model on $`𝒢_D`$ to the corresponding spanning tree model on $`𝒢_T`$ . In particular the partitions functions are equal.

The utility of the $`\overline{}`$ operator in the dimer model is the subject of the next section.

### 10.2 Dimers on finite graphs

A subgraph $`𝒢_1`$ of $`𝒢`$ is said to be simply connected if it consists of the set of edges and vertices contained on or inside a simple polygonal path in $`𝒢`$.

###### Theorem 10.1

Let $`𝒢_1`$ be a simply connected subgraph of a graph $`𝒢`$ (where $`𝒢`$ has a critical weight function), and $`\overline{}_1`$ the submatrix of $`\overline{}`$ corresponding to $`𝒢_1`$. The dimer partition function on $`𝒢_1`$ is $`Z_1=\sqrt{|det\overline{}_1|}`$. The probability of edges $`\{w_1b_1,\mathrm{},w_kb_k\}`$ occurring in a configuration chosen with respect to the Boltzmann measure $`\mu `$ is

$$\left(\underset{i=1}{\overset{k}{}}\overline{}_1(w_i,b_i)\right)\underset{1i,jk}{det}((\overline{}_1)^1(w_i,b_j)).$$

The function $`\overline{}_1^1`$ is called the coupling function or inverse Kasteleyn matrix.

Proof: For the first statement it suffices to show that $`\overline{}`$ is Kasteleyn-flat . That is, we must show that for each face of $`𝒢_1`$ (except the outer face) with vertices $`u_1,v_1,\mathrm{},u_m,v_m`$ in cyclic order, we have

$$\mathrm{arg}(\overline{}(u_1,v_1)\mathrm{}\overline{}(u_m,v_m))=\mathrm{arg}((1)^{m1}\overline{}(v_1,u_2)\mathrm{}\overline{}(v_{m1},u_m)\overline{}(v_m,u_1)).$$

(This identity implies that two dimer configurations which only differ around a single face have the same argument in the expansion of the determinant. By , any two configurations can be obtained from one another by such displacements.) To prove this identity, note that it is true if the points are regularly spaced along a $`2m`$-gon, and note that it remains true if you move one point at a time.

For the second statement, see . $`\mathrm{}`$

### 10.3 Volume and mean curvature of $`P(𝒢)`$

###### Proposition 10.2 (Milnor )

The volume of a hyperbolic simplex in the upper half space model with vertices at $`\mathrm{},(0,0,1),(1,0,0)`$ and $`(\mathrm{cos}\theta ,\mathrm{sin}\theta ,0)`$ is $`L((\pi \theta )/2)`$, where $`L`$ is the Lobachevsky function (1).

Let $`𝒢`$ be a bipartite planar graph with an isoradial embedding, and $`P(𝒢^{})`$ the hyperbolic polyhedron associated to its dual (vertices of $``$ are vertices of $`𝒢^{}`$). For each rhombus $`R(wb)`$ of $`𝒢`$ let $`w,x,b,y`$ be its four vertices; we can decompose $`P`$ into simplices, so that the part of $`P`$ over $`R`$ consists of two simplices with vertices $`w,x,y,\mathrm{}`$ and $`b,x,y,\mathrm{}`$. Here vertices $`x,y`$ are ideal whereas $`w`$ and $`b`$ are in the interior of hyperbolic three-space (at Euclidean distance $`1`$ from the $`xy`$-plane). Each of these simplices has volume $`L(\theta )`$, where $`\theta `$ is the half-angle of the rhombus. Therefore in the expression for the determinant of $`\overline{}`$, the sum of the terms involving $`L`$ is $`\frac{1}{2\pi }`$ times the volume of $`P`$.

The mean curvature of a compact convex polyhedron in $`^3`$ is by definition the sum over the edges of $`(\pi \theta _{\text{dih}})\mathrm{}`$, where $`\theta _{\text{dih}}`$ is the dihedral angle and $`\mathrm{}`$ is the hyperbolic edge length. For an ideal polyhedron, the edge lengths are infinite, so one first assigns a small horosphere to each vertex and then computes the edge lengths in the exterior of these horospheres. This definition of course depends on the radii of the horospheres. In the case of a $`P`$ arising from an isoradial embedding of $`𝒢`$ we can choose for a fixed small $`ϵ`$ all the horospheres to be Euclidean balls of diameter $`ϵ`$; in this case the hyperbolic length of an edge between points $`v_1`$ and $`v_2`$ is exactly

$$2\mathrm{log}\frac{|v_2v_1|}{ϵ},$$

where $`|v_2v_1|`$ is the Euclidean distance from $`v_1`$ to $`v_2`$.

For a rhombus of half-angle $`\theta `$, the dihedral angle of $`P`$ at the dual edge is $`\pi 2\theta `$. Therefore the mean curvature per vertex of $`P`$ is

$$\frac{4}{|𝒢_1|}\underset{e𝒢_1}{}\theta \mathrm{log}\frac{2\mathrm{sin}\theta }{ϵ}=4\pi \mathrm{log}ϵ+\frac{4}{|𝒢_1|}\underset{e𝒢_1}{}\theta \mathrm{log}2\mathrm{sin}\theta $$
(16)
this last equality holds since at each vertex the sum of the half-angles is $`\pi `$. Finally it makes sense to define the normalized mean curvature to be the above formula (16) without the $`4\pi \mathrm{log}ϵ`$ term.

### 10.4 Geometry and Statistical mechanics

If $`𝒢_D`$ arises as $`𝒢_T𝒢_T^{}`$ for a periodic isoradial graph $`𝒢_T`$, we can identify $`det_1\overline{}`$ with the partition function of the associated dimer model, and $`\overline{}^1`$ as the coupling function, as discussed at the end of section 10.1.

Moreover we have

###### Theorem 10.3

The volume per site of $`P(𝒢_D^{})`$ is $`2\pi `$ times the entropy per site of the dimer model. The normalized mean curvature per site of $`P(𝒢_D^{})`$ is $`4\pi `$ times the mean energy per site of a dimer configuration.

Proof: In the dimer model the probability of occurrence of an edge $`e=wb`$ is $`\nu (e)|\overline{}^1(w,b)|=\frac{\theta }{\pi }`$. Recall that the energy contribution for this edge is $`\mathrm{log}2\mathrm{sin}\theta .`$ The average energy per vertex $`\overline{E}`$ is therefore $`1/|𝒢_1|`$ times the sum over the edges in a fundamental domain of $`\frac{\theta }{\pi }\mathrm{log}2\mathrm{sin}\theta `$. By the argument of Proposition 9.1 of , the fact that the edge correlations tend to zero implies that the entropy per vertex of the dimer model is precisely $`(\mathrm{log}det_1\overline{})\overline{E}`$, or

$$\frac{1}{|𝒢_1|}\underset{e}{}\frac{1}{\pi }L(\theta ),$$

that is, $`1/2\pi `$ times the volume per vertex of $`P`$. $`\mathrm{}`$


text:
# Charm-sea Contribution to High-𝑝_𝑇 𝜓 Production at the Fermilab Tevatron

## Abstract

The direct production of $`J/\psi (\psi ^{})`$ at large transverse momentum, $`p_TM_{J/\psi }`$, at the Fermilab Tevatron is revisited. It is found that the sea-quark initiated processes dominate in the high-$`p_T`$ region within the framework of color-singlet model, which is not widely realized. We think this finding is enlightening for further investigation on the charmonium production mechanism.

Quarkonium production and decays have long been taken as an ideal means to investigate the nature of Quantum Chromodynamics(QCD) and other phenomena. Due to the approximately non-relativistic nature, the description of heavy quark and antiquark system stands as one of the simplest applications of QCD. The rich spectrum of its radial and orbital excitations provides a suitable play ground for testing QCD based models. The heavy, but not very heavy, quark mass enables one to get knowledge of both perturbative and nonperturbative QCD via investigating quarkonium production and decays. The clean signals of quarkonium leptonic decays render the experiment detection with a high precision, and therefore, quarkonium may play an unique role in the study of other phenomena as well, e.g. in detecting the parton distribution, the QGP signal, and even new physics. However, only with a theory which can precisely describe heavy quarkonium production and decays, may these advantages come true.

During the past decade, intrigued by the discovery of $`J/\psi (\psi ^{})`$ surplus production at high $`p_T`$ at the Fermilab Tevatron , our understanding on the natures of quarkonium production and decays has experienced dramatic changes.

Conventionally, the so-called color-singlet model (CSM) was widely employed in the study of heavy quarkonium production and decays . In CSM, it is assumed that the $`Q\overline{Q}`$ pair produced in a high energy collision will bind to form a given quarkonium state only if the $`Q\overline{Q}`$ pair is created in color-singlet state with the same quantum numbers as the produced bound states; as well, in the quarkonium decays the annihilating $`Q\overline{Q}`$ pair will be in short distance and singlet with the same quantum numbers as its parent bound states. It is assumed in CSM that the production amplitudes can be factorized into short distance and long distance parts. The short distance sector is perturbative QCD applicable, while all the long distance nonperturbative effects are attributed to a single parameter, the wave function. That is, e.g.,

$`d\sigma (\psi _n+\mathrm{X})=d\sigma (c\overline{c_1}(^3S_1)+\mathrm{X})|R_{\psi _n}(0)|^2.`$ (1)
The wavefunctions can be either determined phenomenologically through experiment measurement of quarkonium leptonic decay rates, like

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\psi _nl\overline{l}){\displaystyle \frac{4\alpha ^2}{9m_Q^2}}|R_{\psi _n}(0)|^2,`$ (2)
or calculated from potential models.

CSM provides a prescription for calculations of not only the inclusive production rate of quarkonium states, but also their inclusive decay rates into light hadrons, leptons, and photons. Based on it many investigations had been carried out in past more than two decades, and at least qualitative description of quarkonium production and decays were achieved. Nevertheless, color-singlet factorization is only an ad hoc hypothesis. There are no general arguments to guarantee such a naive model may still work up to higher order radiative corrections. In fact people got know for quite long time it does not. Furthermore, the attempt to incorporate relativistic corrections also met difficulties . Although this kind of shortcomings of CSM had been known for many years, and some disagreements between theoretical predictions and experiment data existed, there was no big breakthrough in theory until the CDF group released  the data on large-$`p_T`$ $`J/\psi `$ production collected in the 1992-1993 run. The new data, which benefited from the advanced technology of vertex detector were free of the large background from $`B`$ decays, put the CSM in an awkward situation, as the data differ very much from the leading order(LO) CSM predictions in both normalization and $`p_T`$ scaling.

In 1993, Braaten and Yuan  noticed that at sufficiently high $`p_T`$ the dominant charmonium production mechanism is the production of a parton with large transverse momentum followed by its fragmenting into a charmonium state. With including the contribution by fragmentation mechanism, the prompt $`J/\psi `$ data can be explained within a small amount of error , where the charm quark splitting into $`\chi _c`$ states and then feeding down to $`J/\psi `$ contributes overwhelmingly. Nevertheless, one can merely get a similar $`p_T`$ asymptotic behavior for $`\psi ^{}`$ production with the same scenario, and large discrepancy in normalization remained as well. This phenomenon was referred as the so-called ”$`\psi ^{}`$-surplus” production or ”-anomaly”.

In 1997, a measurement of direct $`J/\psi `$ production exposed , in which the higher excited states feeddown were stripped off. To one’s surprise the new experiment result excesses the CSM prediction by a factor of $``$ 30, the same as in $`\psi ^{}`$ production. Nowadays, the former ”$`\psi ^{}`$-surplus” problem turns to be the generic ”$`\psi `$-surplus” problem terminologically.

A general factorization formalism  developed from the non-relativistic QCD(NRQCD) , which describes the inclusive heavy quarkonium production and decays, were established by Bodwin, Braaten and Lepage(BBL). NRQCD is formulated from first principles and the BBL approach allows relativistic and radiative corrections to be performed safely to any desired order. One of the striking advancements of the new development from CSM is that within the BBL framework the intermediate $`Q\overline{Q}`$ state, which subsequently evolves into quarkonium states nonperturbatively, can be in both color-singlet and -octet configurations. At first order in $`v`$, the relative velocity of heavy quark, BBL and CSM are coincident in describing the S-wave quarkonium production.

Based on the BBL formalism, Braaten and Fleming suggested to solve the $`\psi ^{}`$ surplus production puzzle via color-octet mechanism(COM) . They proposed that the dominant $`\psi ^{}`$ production at high $`p_T`$ is through the fragmentation of a gluon into a $`c\overline{c}`$ pair in color-octet configuration, which will evolve into $`\psi ^{}`$ non-perturbatively. Indeed they gave a well-fitted curve to the data and from which the non-perturbative matrix element $`<𝒪_8^\psi ^{}(^3S_1)>`$ was extracted with a magnitude being consistent with the estimation from NRQCD ”velocity scaling rules”. After their pioneer work, hundreds of investigations have been performed in order to find either the signatures of color-octet states or any implication of the new proposal to other phenomena .

The present situation is that on one hand the COM stands as the most plausible approach, up to now, in explaining the $`J/\psi (\psi ^{})`$ production ”anomaly”; on the other hand, this scenario encounters some difficulties in confronting with other phenomena . The most striking crisis is the absence of high-$`p_T`$ transversely polarized $`J/\psi `$ and $`\psi ^{}`$ at the Tevatron in the first measurement from CDF . According to NRQCD spin-symmetry, and the prescription that the dominant charmonium production mechanism at high $`p_T`$ is of a gluon splitting into a color-octet $`{}_{}{}^{3}S_{1}^{}`$ charm quark pair, such polarized states should appear . Therefore, to what degree the COM plays the role in quarkonium production is still an open question to my understanding. To find distinctive color-octet signatures and to eliminate the large errors remaining in different fits for corresponding matrix elements are currently urgent tasks in this research realm, for both theory and experiment.

In order to overcome the difficulties COM met, people tried to attribute large amount of high-$`p_T`$ events to intrinsic transverse momentum of the interacting partons, suppose that the large uncertainties existed in the $`k_t`$-factorization are manageable and the $`k_t`$ would still manifest itself in not very small-$`x`$ . To be noted that in the $`k_t`$-factorization formalism, the analyses suggest that the direct $`J/\psi `$ production is still dominated by color-octet contributions, but from $`{}_{}{}^{1}S_{0}^{(8)}`$ and $`{}_{}{}^{3}P_{J}^{(8)}`$, up to large transverse momenta of the order $`p_T20`$ GeV.

Now that the difficulties for direct $`J/\psi `$ and its radial excitation $`\psi ^{}`$ production at the Tevatron are the same within a small amount of error, as aforementioned, one may reasonably infer that the origins accounting for the large discrepancies between experimental data and the color-singlet description for both states would be the same. On this premise our investigation in this work will be restricted to $`J/\psi `$ for simplicity. The results and conclusions are applicable to $`\psi ^{}`$.

We notice that within the framework of collinear factorization, quarkonium production processes initiated by the sea-quark interactions have been paid less attention in previous investigations in color-singlet prescription. In Ref.  the sea initiated processes were considered, indirectly, for the large-$`p_T`$ $`J/\psi (\psi ^{})`$ production, where the relative importance of valence and sea parton interacting processes was not distinguished. The leading order(LO) charm-sea interacting process was investigated in ref. , and found that it contributes negligiblely to the large-$`p_T`$ $`\psi `$ production as expected, since CDF data indicates that the $`d\widehat{\sigma }/dp_T^2`$ scaling favors fragmentation process behaving like $`1/p_T^4`$ which happens beyond the LO. Therefore, in order to estimate the sea quark contributions we need to consider the possible processes beyond the LO. It is well-known that the source of the charm-sea distribution can be traced back to higher order gluon-gluon processes. And, because of the large logarithmic term remaining in the NLO result of gluon-gluon to charm pair , the evolution effects of summing up all the large logs to any order tend to be important for the processes we are interested in here. Indeed, following evaluation shows that the naive NLO gluon-gluon to charm pair partonic process, which was considered in the calculations of , can not simply substitutes the charm-sea induced processes of our concern.

On the other hand, although superficially the sea-quark interacting processes seems to be negligible, since the sea distribution probabilities are pretty small comparing to those of valence quarks and gluons. Due to being in high energy and at high, but not very high, $`p_T`$ region, the $`\widehat{s}/\widehat{t}`$, the ratio of Mandelstam variables of the total center-of-mass energy squared in $`s`$ and $`t`$-channels, kinematically suppresses the valence-quark and gluon initiated processes relative to the sea interacting ones. And in the meantime high energy and large $`p_T`$ enhance the sea quark densities inside the incident hadrons. To see this picture more clearly, let us have a close look at the fragmentation prescription for quarkonium production. Generally, quarkonium fragmentation production, $`A+B\psi +\mathrm{X}`$, can be expressed as

$`d\sigma (A`$ $`+`$ $`BH(p_T)+\mathrm{X})={\displaystyle }_{a,b,c}{\displaystyle }_0^1dx_af_{a/A}(x_a)`$ (3)
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle _0^1}𝑑x_bf_{b/B}(x_b){\displaystyle _0^1}𝑑z𝑑\widehat{\sigma }(a+bc(p_T/z)+\mathrm{X})`$ (4)
$`\times `$ $`D_{cH}(z,\mu ),`$ (5)
where $`c`$ is the fragmenting parton, either a gluon or a (anit)charm quark, and the sum runs over all possible partons. $`D(z,\mu )`$ is the fragmentation function and $`z`$ is the momentum fraction of the the fragmenting parton carried by quarkonium state. The evolution of the fragmentation function $`D_{cH}(z,\mu )`$ with scale $`\mu `$ in Eq.(5) is accomplished by the utilization of Alterelli-Parisi(AP) equations

$`\mu {\displaystyle \frac{}{\mu }}D_{i\psi }(z,\mu )={\displaystyle \underset{j}{}}{\displaystyle _z^1}{\displaystyle \frac{dy}{y}}P_{ij}(z/y,\mu )D_{j\psi }(y,\mu ),`$ (6)
where the $`P_{ij}`$ are the splitting functions of a parton $`j`$ into a parton $`i`$.

To show the importance of the sea quark interacting processes in the fragmentation approach (5), we do a simple comparison, for example, of the hard-scattering processes

$`g+gC+\overline{C}`$ (7)
with

$`g+C(\overline{C})g+C(\overline{C}),`$ (8)
where the $`C`$ and $`\overline{C}`$ stand for charm and anticharm quarks, which are produced slightly off-shell and in high energy with large $`p_T`$. In LO and massless limit, the differential cross sections for processes (7) and (8) are:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\sigma _5}{d\widehat{t}}}(\widehat{s},\widehat{t})={\displaystyle \frac{\pi \alpha _s^2}{\widehat{s}^2}}\left\{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{6}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\widehat{u}^2+\widehat{t}^2}{\widehat{u}\widehat{t}}}\right){\displaystyle \frac{3}{8}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\widehat{u}^2+\widehat{t}^2}{\widehat{s}^2}}\right)\right\}`$ (9)
and

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\sigma _6}{d\widehat{t}}}(\widehat{s},\widehat{t})={\displaystyle \frac{\pi \alpha _s^2}{\widehat{s}^2}}\left\{\left({\displaystyle \frac{\widehat{u}^2+\widehat{s}^2}{\widehat{t}^2}}\right){\displaystyle \frac{4}{9}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\widehat{u}^2+\widehat{s}^2}{\widehat{s}\widehat{u}}}\right)\right\},`$ (10)
respectively. Since we are interested in large-$`p_T`$ $`J/\psi (\psi ^{})`$ hadroproduction at high energy, obviously in a certain scope of phase space, the process (7) is suppressed with respect to process (8) by the factor of $`\widehat{s}/\widehat{t}`$. However, this is just a schematic argument. To be more strict, we need to convolute the hard scattering cross section with parton distribution and fragmentation functions. Without losing qualitative correctness, for simplicity we do a comparison for the subsets $`g+gC+\overline{C}`$ and $`g+C(\overline{C})g+C(\overline{C})`$ induced processes in $`p\overline{p}`$ collision by convoluting the hard part with only the parton densities, or in other words, by integrating out the common fragmentation probability $`D_C^\psi `$. Direct numerical calculation shows that the cross section induced by hard process (8) overtakes what induced by (7) by a factor of 7 at $`p_T=15`$ GeV.

For completeness, we consider processes

$`q_i(\overline{q_i})+C(\overline{C})q_i(\overline{q_i})+C(\overline{C}),`$ (11)
in our numerical calculation as well. Here, the $`q_i(\overline{q_i})`$ represents partons of both valence and sea quarks(antiquarks) of the colliding nucleons. Practical exercise, similar as performed in preceding paragraph, shows that this kind of hard interaction processes also contributes more to $`J/\psi `$ large-$`p_T`$ production than via subprocess $`g+gC+\overline{C}`$. And, to be noted that the latter was taken to be the dominant process in many of previous analyses within CSM.

In the numerical calculation of the differential cross section, we need to choose a set of parton distributions. In this work we take CTEQ5M  parameterization as our input. We have also tried another set of parton distributions, the MRST99 , and found that different parton distribution functions give similar results within tens of percent. That means the conclusions given in this paper will not be spoiled by taking a different set of parton distributions for convolution in Eq.(6).

In figure 1, various fragmentation contributions to direct $`J/\psi `$ production are shown, and the sum of them is confronted to the CDF data. Since we merely want to sketch the importance of sea-quark contributions to the large-$`p_T`$ charmonium production, the lowest order hard scattering cross sections and fragmentation function are employed. We also neglect the effect from non-diagonal splitting function, $`P_{cg}`$, in Eq. (6), which, as pointed out in Ref. , may give a factor of as large as 1.5 to the charm fragmentation process. We estimate the uncertainties of higher order corrections by varying the scale, given that a lower value of scale will account for, in a certain degree, the contributions from higher order corrections and non-diagonal splitting functions. The upper and lower lines in the figure are obtained by varying the scales of factorization, renormalization and fragmentation. The upper curve corresponds to $`\mu _R=\mu _F=\mu _{\mathrm{frag}}=p_T/2`$, while the lower curve to $`\mu _R=\mu _F=\mu _{\mathrm{frag}}=2p_T`$. In drawing the diagram we use the fragmentation function given in Ref. and values quoted thereof ($`R_0^2=0.8\mathrm{GeV}^3`$, $`\alpha _s=0.26`$, $`m_c=1.5`$ GeV). The symmetry of a sea quark and its antiquark in hard scattering and fragmentation precesses is invoked. In addition, we perform our calculation in the $`p_T10`$ GeV region, where contributions from lowest order parton fusion processes can be safely neglected,

From figure 1 we see that the discrepancy between direct $`J/\psi `$ production data and the CSM prediction(the sum of different processes) is less than an order in optimal case (the upper solid line), rather than the common belief of 30 or more. The finding that the charm-sea initiated processes contribute dominantly to high $`p_T`$ charmonium production, as shown in figure 1, within CSM looks surprise, whereas, it is not really an unthinkable thing. Similar cases exist in some other quarkonium high energy production processes as well. For example, in photon-photon collision, quarkonium production via resolved processes is not always minor to the direct one. In addition, it should be noted that although the charm sea originates from the high order valence quark and gluon interactions, the naive NLO QCD result for $`J/\psi (\psi ^{})`$ hadroproduction can not simply substitutes the result from sea-qaurk initiated processes. In the latter case we are considering the production via fragmentation mechanism, which is already beyond LO in $`\alpha _s`$.

To conclude, in this work we study the relative importance of the sea quark initiated processes with respect to the valence quark and gluon initiated ones for large-$`p_T`$ $`J/\psi (\psi ^{})`$ production within the CSM. It is found that the former may contribute more than the latter by a factor of six. We notice that to many people within the community the gluon initiated processes are still taken to be the dominant ones for the high-$`p_T`$ $`J/\psi (\psi ^{})`$ production from CSM calculations. We hope this work may elucidate it somehow. With including the new production scheme, the total cross section from CSM prediction fall off the experiment data by less than an order in extreme situation. Therefore, to explain the CDF data, COM is still necessary and essential. Nevertheless, the increase of the contribution from CSM means a shrinkage of the contribution from COM, which might be as large as twenty percent. Furthermore, the result in this work gives us a strong hint that the $`J/\psi (\psi ^{})`$-surplus production at the Fermilab Tevatron might still be explained within CSM after including the NLO calculation, like the charmonium photoproduction at HERA . At least the color-octet contribution will be much less than previously thought. Finally, we would like to point out that since the (anti)charm quark is taken to be massless in our calculation, some uncertainties will be induced by this measure to order of $`𝒪(M_{J/\psi }/p_T)`$. For detailed estimations of the uncertainties by taking zero mass scheme see Refs. . In all, the error would be within a factor of two in our analysis, which will not change the conclusions of this work.

This work was supported by the Grant-in-Aid of JSPS committee. The author would like to thank K. Hagiwara for helpful discussion.