Toward a 3d Ising model with a weakly-coupled string theory dual

Understand

It has long been expected that the 3d Ising model can be thought of as a string theory, where one interprets the domain walls that separate up spins from down spins as two-dimensional string worldsheets.

• The usual Ising Hamiltonian measures the area of these domain walls.
• This theory has string coupling of unit magnitude.
• We add new local terms to the Ising Hamiltonian that further weight each spin configuration by a factor depending on the genus of the corresponding domain wall, resulting in a new 3d Ising model that has a tunable bare string coupling $g_s$.