Equivalence of the linked-cluster expansion and the variational cumulant expansion in the high-temperature limit

It is shown for the Ising model that the linked-cluster expansion (LCE) is a special case of the variational cumulant expansion (VCE) in the high-temperature limit. The VCE was originally developed and formulated to treat lattice-gauge-field models. The free energy calculated from the VCE with a trial Hamiltonian of mean-field form in the high-temperature limit is in fact identical to that from the LCE. Thus, a more general expansion that is valid for the whole temperature range is established for the treatment of Ising systems.