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Physical review. B, Condensed matter

Quantum spin glass: A replica-symmetric theory with positive entropy

Alba Theumann

Published Jan 1, 1986• 15 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In the present paper we present a detailed analysis of quantum effects in the spin-glass transition as described by a quantum Heisenberg analogue of the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model. The spin operators are represented in terms of two fermion fields and the problem is reduced to that of n fermion levels at one site in a random time-dependent field and with an interaction delocalized in time. It is shown that within a Hartree-Fock approximation in a replica-symmetric theory one obtains a mean-field description of the transition with satisfactory zero-temperature properties. The transition is described by two order parameters: the static magnetic susceptibility and the spin-glass order parameter. The saddle-point equations obtained in this work are analogous to those of Sommers for a theory of classical spins.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.33.559

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Physical review. B, Condensed matter•Aug 20, 2002•23 citations
In the present paper we present a detailed analysis of quantum effects in the spin-glass transition as described by a quantum Heisenberg analogue of the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model. The spin operators are represented in terms of two fermion fields and the problem is reduced to that of n fermion levels at one site in a random time-dependent field and with an interaction delocalized in time. It is shown that within a Hartree-Fock approximation in a replica-symmetric theory one obtains a mean-field description of the transition with satisfactory zero-temperature properties. The transition is described by two order parameters: the static magnetic susceptibility and the spin-glass order parameter. The saddle-point equations obtained in this work are analogous to those of Sommers for a theory of classical spins.
This study investigates the quantum effects in transverse-field Ising spin glass models with rotationally invariant random interactions. The primary aim is to evaluate the validity of a quasistatic approach that captures the imaginary-time dependence of the order parameters beyond the conventional static approximation. Using the replica method combined with the Suzuki-Trotter decomposition, we established a stability condition for the replica symmetric solution, which is analogous to the de Almeida-Thouless criterion. Numerical analysis of the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model estimates a value of the critical transverse field, Γ_{c}, which is consistent with previous Monte Carlo-based estimations. For the Hopfield model, it provides an estimate of Γ_{c}, which has not been previously evaluated. For the random orthogonal model, our analysis suggests that quantum effects alter the random first-order transition scenario in the low-temperature limit. This study supports a quasistatic treatment for analyzing quantum spin glasses and may offer useful insights into the analysis of quantum optimization algorithms.
This thesis aims at a description of the equilibrium dynamics of quantum spin glass systems. To this end a generic fermionic SU(2), spin 1/2 spin glass model with infinite-range interactions is defined in the first part. The model is treated in the framework of imaginary-time Grassmann field theory along with the replica formalism. A dynamical two-step decoupling procedure, which retains the full time dependence of the (replica-symmetric) saddle point, is presented. As a main result, a set of highly coupled self-consistency equations for the spin-spin correlations can be formulated. Beyond the so-called spin-static approximation two complementary systematic approximation schemes are developed in order to render the occurring integration problem feasible. One of these methods restricts the quantum-spin dynamics to a manageable number of bosonic Matsubara frequencies. A sequence of improved approximants to some quantity can be obtained by gradually extending the set of employed discrete frequencies. Extrapolation of such a sequence yields an estimate of the full dynamical solution. The other method is based on a perturbative expansion of the self-consistency equations in terms of the dynamical correlations. In the second part these techniques are applied to the isotropic Heisenberg spin glass both on the Fock space (HSGF) and, exploiting the Popov-Fedotov trick, on the spin space (HSGS). The critical temperatures of the paramagnet to spin glass phase transitions are determined accurately. Compared to the spin-static results, the dynamics causes slight increases of T_c by about 3% and 2%, respectively. For the HSGS the specific heat C(T) is investigated in the paramagnetic phase and, by way of a perturbative method, below but close to T_c. The exact C(T)-curve is shown to exhibit a pronounced non-analyticity at T_c and, contradictory to recent reports by other authors, there is no indication of maximum above T_c. In the last part of this thesis the spin glass model is augmented with a nearest-neighbor hopping term on an infinite-dimensional cubic lattice. An extended self-consistency structure can be derived by combining the decoupling procedure with the dynamical CPA method. For the itinerant Ising spin glass numerous solutions within the spin-static approximation are presented both at finite and zero temperature. Systematic dynamical corrections to the spin-static phase diagram in the plane of temperature and hopping strength are calculated, and the location of the quantum critical point is determined.
In the replica formalism for an Ising spin glass the interaction energy between two sites depends on the number of replicas of the two sites that have parallel or antiparallel spins; therefore, the energy may take n+1 different values even when permutation symmetry is assumed in the space of n replicas. This insight is used to propose a new replica-symmetric solution to the renormalization-group equations for a one-dimensional spin-glass model with long-range interactions. In a simple approximation this solution gives a value of (2\ensuremath{\epsilon}${)}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}1/2}$ for the correlation-length exponent [\ensuremath{\epsilon}=1-\ensuremath{\sigma} and (1+\ensuremath{\sigma})/2 is the range parameter for the random interactions]. The new solution is argued to be equivalent to the replica-symmetric ansatz for the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model.
Within the replica approach to mean-field spin-glasses the transition from ergodic high-temperature behaviour to the glassy low-temperature phase is marked by the instability of the replica-symmetric saddle-point. For general spin-glass models with non-Gaussian field distributions the corresponding Hessian is a 2n×2n2^n\times 2^n2n×2n matrix with the number nnn of replicas tending to zero eventually. We block-diagonalize this Hessian matrix using representation theory of the permutation group and identify the blocks related to the spin-glass susceptibility. Performing the limit n→0n\to 0n→0 within these blocks we derive expressions for the de~Almeida-Thouless line of general spin-glass models. Specifying these expressions to the cases of the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick, Viana-Bray, and the Lévy spin glass respectively we obtain results in agreement with previous findings using the cavity approach.
Parisi's replica-symmetry-breaking scheme is applied to the quantum Sherrington-Kirkpatrick Ising spin glass in a transverse magnetic field. The order-parameter function q(x) is calculated near Tf{\mathit{T}}_{\mathit{f}}Tf​, while for all temperatures the first stage of replica-symmetry breaking is calculated. Internal energy, entropy, and magnetic susceptibility are calculated in order to investigate the quality of both the replica-symmetric and the replica-symmetry-broken theories.
In this paper we investigate for the infinite-range Ising spin-glass model [i.e., the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick (SK) model] with a transverse field under the static approximation by using the imaginary-time replica formalism. From the investigations we show three important results: First, we show that a replica-symmetric quantum spin-glass phase is stable in most of the area of the spin-glass phase in the temperature-transverse field phase diagram. This confirms the existence of a stable replica-symmetric spin glass phase under the static approximation, which is contrary to some previous results derived without the static approximation where the replica-symmetric solution is always unstable in the whole spin-glass phase. Second, we show our theoretical result for the nonlinear susceptibility ${\ensuremath{\chi}}_{\mathrm{nl}}$ which conforms to the experimental result of nonlinear susceptibility measurement by Wu et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 71, 1919 (1993)] in a quantum spin glass ${\mathrm{LiHo}}_{x}{\mathrm{Y}}_{1\ensuremath{-}x}{\mathrm{F}}_{4}.$ Third, in a classical (SK) spin-glass system, we confirm the anomaly in the second temperature derivative of CH/T{C}_{H}/TCH​/T near the glass transition temperature Tg,{T}_{g},Tg​, associated possibly with the field-dependent variation of entropy in the spin glass transition, which agrees with the previous experimental observation in a classical spin glass system CuMn by Fogle et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 50, 1815 (1983)]. We also show that this anomaly is suppressed by the nonzero transverse field of the quantum spin glass system, by which we can check for the quantum tunneling competing against spin freezing.