On the mean-field equations for ferromagnetic spin systems

Abstract

We derive mean-field equations for a general class of ferromagnetic spin systems with an explicit error bound in finite volumes. The proof is based on a link between the mean-field equation and the free convolution formalism of random matrix theory, which we exploit in terms of a dynamical method. We present three sample applications of our results to Kać interactions, randomly diluted models, and models with an asymptotically vanishing external field.