On a conjecture of Dyson

We study Dyson's classical r-component ferromagnetic hierarchical model with a long range interaction potential $U(i,j)= -l(d(i,j)) d^{-2}(i,j)$, where $d(i,j)$ denotes the hierarchical distance. We prove a conjecture of Dyson, which states that the convergence of the series $l_1+l_2+...$, where $l_n=l(2^n)$, is a necessary and sufficient condition of the existence of phase transition in the model under consideration, and the spontaneous magnetization vanishes at the critical point, i.e. there is no Thouless' effect. We find however that the distribution of the normalized average spin at the critical temperature $T_c$ tends to the uniform distribution on the unit sphere in $\R^r$ as the volume tends to infinity, a phenomenon which resembles the Thouless effect. We prove that the limit distribution of the average spin is non-Gaussian for T below $T_c$.