Gonihedric Ising Actions

Abstract

We discuss a generalized Ising action containing nearest neighbour, next to nearest neighbour and plaquette terms that has been suggested as a potential string worldsheet discretization on cubic lattices by Savvidy and Wegner. This displays both first and second order transitions depending on the value of a ``self-intersection'' coupling as well as possessing a novel semi-global symmetry.

Comments: Latex + 2 postscript figures. Poster session contribution to "Lattice96" conference, Washington University, StLouis