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arXiv:2504.05842 · Journal of Statistical Mechanics Theory and Experiment

Exact results for spin glass criticality

Gesualdo Delfino A

Published Jun 1, 2025• 2 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract In recent years scale invariant scattering theory provided the first exact access to the magnetic critical properties of two-dimensional statistical systems with quenched disorder. We show how the theory extends to the overlap variables entering the characterization of spin glass properties. The resulting exact fixed point equations yield both the magnetic and, for the first time, the spin glass renormalization group fixed points. For the case of the random bond Ising model, on which we focus, the spin glass subspace of solutions is found to contain a line of fixed points. We discuss the implications of the results for Ising spin glass criticality and compare with the available numerical results.

DOI
10.1088/1742-5468/ade135

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Abstract The N -color Ashkin–Teller model corresponds to N Ising models coupled by four-spin interactions. We consider the two-dimensional case in presence of quenched disorder and use scale invariant scattering theory to determine all the solutions of the exact renormalization group fixed points equations. The weak disorder sector is characterized by a solution that, for any fixed N larger than 1, is a line of fixed points with Ising thermal exponents and continuously varying magnetic exponents. The number of fixed point solutions allowed by the symmetries of the model increases at strong disorder illustrating the growing dependence on the distributions of the two random couplings. The presence of some critical exponents which do not depend on the symmetry parameter N confirms this type of superuniversality as a peculiar feature of random criticality.
Abstract We use scale invariant scattering theory to exactly determine the lines of renormalization group fixed points for O(N )-symmetric models with quenched disorder in two dimensions. Random fixed points are characterized by two disorder parameters: a modulus that vanishes when approaching the pure case, and a phase angle. The critical lines fall into three classes depending on the values of the disorder modulus. Besides the class corresponding to the pure case, a second class has maximal value of the disorder modulus and includes Nishimori-like multicritical points as well as zero temperature fixed points. The third class contains critical lines that interpolate, as N varies, between the first two classes. For positive N , it contains a single line of infrared fixed points spanning the values of N from 2−1 \sqrt{2}-1 2​−1 2 − 1 to 1. The symmetry sector of the energy density operator is superuniversal (i.e. N -independent) along this line. For N = 2 a line of fixed points exists only in the pure case, but accounts also for the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless phase observed in presence of disorder.
A renormalization group transformation suitable for spin glasses, and more generally for disordered systems, is presented. The approach is non-standard for two reasons. 1. The coarse graining transformation is performed on the distribution of site overlaps, which clearly is not a Boltzmann-Gibbs distribution. 2. The additional interactions are realized introducing a gauge-field disorder distribution, while the Hamiltonian is kept fixed. Universality classes are thus naturally defined on a large set of models, going from ℤ2 and Gaussian spin glasses to Ising and fully frustrated models, and others. The role of frustration and of the deconfinement transition can also be analysed in terms of fixed points. The proposed analysis is tested numerically on the ℤ2 Edwards-Anderson model in d=4. Good estimates of the critical index ν and of Tc are obtained, and an RG flow diagram is sketched for the first time.
We introduce an exact replica method for the study of critical systems with quenched bond randomness in two dimensions. For the q-state Potts model, we show that a line of renormalization group fixed points interpolates from weak to strong randomness as q-2 grows from small to large values. This theory exhibits a q-independent sector, and allows at the same time for a correlation length exponent which keeps the Ising value and continuously varying magnetization exponent and effective central charge. These findings appear to solve long-standing numerical and theoretical puzzles, and to illustrate the peculiarities which may characterize the conformal field theories of random fixed points.