Large N matrices from a nonlocal spin system

Understand

Large N matrices underpin the best understood models of emergent spacetime.

• We suggest that large N matrices can themselves be emergent from simple quantum mechanical spin models with finite dimensional Hilbert spaces.
• We exhibit the emergence of large N matrices in a nonlocal statistical physics model of order N^2 Ising spins.
• The spin partition function is shown to admit a large N saddle described by a matrix integral, which we solve.