Decay of correlations in surface models

A convergent low-temperature expansion for a variety of models of twodimensional surfaces is presented. It yields existence of the thermodynamic limit for the pressure and correlation functions as well as analyticity inz =e ^– In addition, the estimates give exponential decay of truncated correlations, which proves the existence of a gap in the spectrum of the transfer matrix below the ground state eigenvalue. Two particular examples included in the general framework are the solid-on-solid and discrete Gaussian models.Supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grant No. PHY 79-16812.