Dynamical analysis of low-temperature monte carlo cluster algorithms

We present results on the Swendsen-Wang dynamics for the Ising ferromagnet in the low-temperature case without external field in the thermodynamic limit. We discuss in particular the rate of convergence to the equilibrium Gibbs state in finite and infinite volume, the absence of ergodicity in the infinite volume, and the long-time behavior of the probability distribution of the dynamics for various starting configurations. Our results are purely dynamical in nature in the sense that we never use the reversibility of the process with respect to the Gibbs state, and they apply to a stochastic particle system withnon- Gibbsian invariant measure.