Journal of Statistical Physics, Vol. 71, Nos. 5/6, 1993. p. 981-1002.
Fluctuation of the average spin for one-dimensional Ising spins with nearest neighbor interactions are studied. The distribution function for the average spin is calculated for a finite volume, finite temperature, and finite magnetic field. As the volume increases and the temperature diminishes at zero magnetic field, there are two limits in which the probability distribution shows quite different behaviors: in the thermodynamic limit as the volume goes to infinity for finite temperature, small deviations of the fluctuations are described by a Gaussian
distribution, and in the limit as the temperature vanishes for a finite volume, the ground states are realized with probability one. The crossover between these limits is analyzed via a ratio of the correlation length to the volume. The helix-coil transition in a polypeptide is discussed as an application.