 Spin decimation

Spin decimation sums over spins at selected lattice sites while retaining the others. For alternate-site elimination in a nearest-neighbour periodic chain of even length, the coarse spin-chain transfer matrix is $W^2$, because its $(s,t)$ entry sums $W_{sa}{W}_{at}$ over the eliminated middle spin. Exact preservation $\mathrm{tr}(W^2{)}^{N/2}=\mathrm{tr}{W}^N$ requires keeping the scalar normalization as well as the entry ratios.