Exact recovery in block spin Ising models at the critical line

Abstract

We show how to exactly reconstruct the block structure at the critical line in the so-called Ising block model. This model was recently re-introduced by Berthet, Rigollet and Srivastava in [2]. There the authors show how to exactly reconstruct blocks away from the critical line and they give an upper and a lower bound on the number of observations one needs; thereby they establish a minimax optimal rate (up to constants). Our technique relies on a combination of their methods with fluctuation results obtained in [20]. The latter are extended to the full critical regime. We find that the number of necessary observations depends on whether the interaction parameter between two blocks is positive or negative: In the first case, there are about $N\log N$ observations required to exactly recover the block structure, while in the latter case $\sqrt{N}\log N$ observations suffice.