  Encouraged by the AdS/CFT correspondence, we study emergent local geometry in
large N multi-matrix models from the perspective of a strong coupling
expansion. By considering various solvable interacting models we show how the
emergence or non-emergence of local geometry at strong coupling is captured by
observables that effectively measure the mass of off-diagonal excitations about
a semiclassical eigenvalue background. We find emergent geometry at strong
coupling in models where a mass term regulates an infrared divergence. We also
show that our notion of emergent geometry can be usefully applied to fuzzy
spheres. Although most of our results are analytic, we have found numerical
input valuable in guiding and checking our results.
