  We give the first comprehensive analysis of the effect of boundary conditions
on the mixing time of the Glauber dynamics in the so-called Bethe
approximation. Specifically, we show that spectral gap and the log-Sobolev
constant of the Glauber dynamics for the Ising model on an n-vertex regular
tree with plus-boundary are bounded below by a constant independent of n at all
temperatures and all external fields. This implies that the mixing time is
O(log n) (in contrast to the free boundary case, where it is not bounded by any
fixed polynomial at low temperatures). In addition, our methods yield simpler
proofs and stronger results for the spectral gap and log-Sobolev constant in
the regime where there are multiple phases but the mixing time is insensitive
to the boundary condition. Our techniques also apply to a much wider class of
models, including those with hard-core constraints like the antiferromagnetic
Potts model at zero temperature (proper colorings) and the hard--core lattice
gas (independent sets).
