Critical-temperature variance conjecture for the SK model

Let FNSK(β)F_N^{SK}(\beta) denote the free energy of the Sherrington–Kirkpatrick model with system size NN at inverse temperature β\beta, and let the critical value be βc=1\beta_c=1. Critical-temperature variance conjecture. At the critical value, one expects

Var(FNSK(βc))=16N2logN+O(N2),as N.\operatorname{Var}(F_N^{SK}(\beta_c))=\frac{1}{6}N^{-2}\log N+O(N^{-2}),\qquad\text{as }N\to\infty.

This conjecture concerns the fluctuation scale of the SK free energy at the transition between the high- and low-temperature regimes; numerical computations and heuristic arguments support it, while the stated asymptotic remains unproved in the source.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Elizabeth Collins-Woodfin and Han Gia Le, “Free energy fluctuations in SK and related spin glass models: A literature survey”, arXiv:2510.26960 (2025).

Progress summary

Never refreshed

Nothing recorded yet. Refresh searches the literature and the public web for attempts on this problem, and writes the first summary here.

Solutions 0

No solutions have been posted yet.