The Ising model on $\mathbb{Z} / 2d\mathbb{Z}$ gives to the configuration $x=(x_0, \ldots, x_{2d-1}) \in \{-1,+1\}^{2d}$ a probability proportional to $\exp\\big(\beta \sum_i x_ix_{i+1} \\big)$. The Gibbs sampler with block updates is a Markov chain $X_k$ that evolves on the set of such configurations and updates the odd (resp. even) indices conditionally on the even (resp. odd) indices with probability a half.
It seems like a relatively straightforward application of the path coupling [1] approach (two configurations are neighbours if they agree on all odd or all even coordinates; distance between two neighbours is $1+H(x,y)/d$ where $H$ is the Hamming distance) shows that the mixing time of the Gibbs sampler stays bounded as the size $d$ of the system goes to infinity, which looks rather surprising. Any intuition behind that? If this is already written somewhere, any reference concerning this (or similar) result?
- [1] Chapter 14 of Markov Chains and Mixing Times by D. Levin, Y. Peres and E. Wilmer