Abstract
High-temperature expansions performed at a fixed-order parameter provide a simple and systematic way to derive and correct mean-field theories for statistical mechanical models. For models like spin glasses which have general couplings between spins, the authors show that these expansions generate the Thouless-Anderson-Palmer equations at low order. They explicitly calculate the corrections to TAP theory for these models. For ferromagnetic models, they show that their expansions can easily be converted into 1/d expansions around mean-field theory, where d is the number of spatial dimensions. Only a small finite number of graphs need to be calculated to generate each order in 1/d for thermodynamic quantities like free energy or magnetization. Unlike previous 1/d expansions, the expansions are valid in the low-temperature phases of the models considered. They consider alternative ways to expand around mean-field theory besides 1/d expansions. In contrast to the 1/d expansion for the critical temperature, which is presumably asymptotic, these schemes can be used to devise convergent expansions for the critical temperature. They also appear to give convergent series for thermodynamic quantities and critical exponents. They test the schemes using the spherical model, where their properties can be studied using exact expressions.