Dobrushin (1972) showed that the interface of a 3D Ising model with minus boundary conditions above the @math -plane and plus below is rigid (has @math -fluctuations) at every sufficiently low temperature. Since then, basic features of this interface -- such as the asymptotics of its maximum -- were only identified in more tractable random surface models that approximate the Ising interface at low temperatures, e.g., for the (2+1)D Solid-On-Solid model. Here we study the large deviations of the interface of the 3D Ising model in a cube of side-length @math with Dobrushin's boundary conditions, and in particular obtain a law of large numbers for @math , its maximum: if the inverse-temperature @math is large enough, then @math as @math , in probability, where @math is given by a large deviation rate in infinite volume. We further show that, on the large deviation event that the interface connects the origin to height @math , it consists of a 1D spine that behaves like a random walk, in that it decomposes into a linear (in @math ) number of asymptotically-stationary weakly-dependent increments that have exponential tails. As the number @math of increments diverges, properties of the interface such as its surface area, volume, and the location of its tip, all obey CLTs with variances linear in @math . These results generalize to every dimension @math .
Some aspects of the microscopic theory of interfaces in classical lattice systems are developed. The problem of the appearance of facets in the (Wulff) equilibrium crystal shape is discussed, together with its relation to the discontinuities of the derivatives of the surface tension τ(n) (with respect to the components of the surface normaln) and the role of the step free energy τstep(m) (associated with a step orthogonal tom on a rigid interface). Among the results are, in the case of the Ising model at low enough temperatures, the existence of τstep(m) in the thermodynamic limit, the expression of this quantity by means of a convergent cluster expansion, and the fact that 2τstep(m) is equal to the value of the jump of the derivative ∂τ ∂δ (when δ varies) at the point δ=0 [withn=(m1 sin δ,m2 sin δ, cos δ)]. Finally, using this fact, it is shown that the facet shape is determined by the function τstep(m). We compute the expansion of the surface tension of the 3D random cluster model for q≥ 1 in the limit where p goes to 1. We also compute the asymptotic shape of a plane partition of n as n goes to ∞. This same shape determines the Wulff crystal to order o(ɛ) in the 3D Ising model (and more generally in the 3D random cluster model for q≥ 1) at temperature ɛ. 