Existence of the zero-temperature limit of equilibrium states on topologically transitive countable Markov shifts

Abstract

Abstract Consider a topologically transitive countable Markov shift $\Sigma $ and a summable locally constant potential $\phi $ with finite Gurevich pressure and $\mathrm {Var}_1(\phi ) < \infty $ . We prove the existence of the limit $\lim _{t \to \infty } \mu _t$ in the weak $^\star $ topology, where $\mu _t$ is the unique equilibrium state associated to the potential $t\phi $ . In addition, we present examples where the limit at zero temperature exists for potentials satisfying more general conditions.