We revisit the relation between the spherical model of Berlin-Kac and the spin O(N) model in the limit N→∞ and explain how they are related via the discrete Gaussian free field (GFF). More precisely, using probabilistic limit theorems and concentration of measure we first prove that the infinite volume limit of the spherical model on a d-dimensional torus is a massive GFF in the high-temperature regime, a standard GFF at the critical temperature, and a standard GFF plus a Rademacher random constant in the low-temperature regime. The proof in the case of the critical temperature appears to be new and requires a fine understanding of the zero-average Green's function on the torus. For the spin O(N) model, we study the model in the double limit of the spin-dimensionality and the torus size. We take the limit as first the spin-dimension N goes to infinity, and then the size of the torus, and obtain that the different spin coordinates become i.i.d. fields, whose distribution in the high-temperature regime is a massive GFF, a standard GFF at the critical temperature, and a standard GFF plus a Gaussian random constant in the low-temperature regime. In particular, this means that although the limiting free energies per site of the two models agree at all temperatures, their actual finite-dimensional laws still differ in terms of their zero modes in the low-temperature regime.
