Spin-models in random fields (RFs) are good representations of many impure materials. Their macroscopic collective behaviour is dominated by the fluctuations in the random fields which accumulate on large scales even if the local field is arbitrarily small. This feature is shared by other weakly disordered models, like flux lines or domain walls in random media. We review some of the main theoretical attempts to describe such systems. A modification of Harris’ argument demonstrates that at the critical point the RF disorder is relevant and that (hyper)scaling must be changed. A domain argument invented by Imry and Ma shows that long-range order is not destroyed by weak RFs in more than d=2 dimensions. This result is supported both by a more refined treatment of the domain argument and by considering the roughness of an isolated domain wall due to the randomness. The wall (or flux line) becomes rough due to disorder but if d>2 the wall remains a well-defined object in RF systems. Different approaches are used to calculate the roughness exponent ζ for walls and lines. Some applications of ζ for the description of type-II superconductors and incommensurate systems are given. More detailed calculations are possible for one-dimensional, Bethe-lattice or the hierarchical Dyson model systems, which confirm as a rule the more approximate treatment of the other sections. In one dimension there is an interesting relation between the statistical mechanics of these models and nonlinear dynamics. Non-classical critical behaviour occurs in RF systems for d<6 and is determined in general by three independent exponents which fulfil certain inequalities. The new exponent θ≡yJ>0 is related to the violation of conventional hyperscaling and is determined by the energy ~H0ξ0 of a correlated region of size ξ. In a renormalization group treatment, the temperature T turns out to be a (dangerous) irrelevant variable which is the most prominent property of the systems considered in this review. The irrelevance of thermal fluctuations on large scales produces metastability and hysteresis effects both in the transition region and in the ordered phase, only briefly considered here. These features occur also in other systems with a disordered T=0 fixed point like in the ordered phase of a spin-glass.
Spin-models in random fields (RFs) are good representations of many impure materials. Their macroscopic collective behaviour is dominated by the fluctuations in the random fields which accumulate on large scales even if the local field is arbitrarily small. This feature is shared by other weakly disordered models, like flux lines or domain walls in random media. We review some of the main theoretical attempts to describe such systems. A modification of Harris’ argument demonstrates that at the critical point the RF disorder is relevant and that (hyper)scaling must be changed. A domain argument invented by Imry and Ma shows that long-range order is not destroyed by weak RFs in more than d=2 dimensions. This result is supported both by a more refined treatment of the domain argument and by considering the roughness of an isolated domain wall due to the randomness. The wall (or flux line) becomes rough due to disorder but if d>2 the wall remains a well-defined object in RF systems. Different approaches are used to calculate the roughness exponent ζ for walls and lines. Some applications of ζ for the description of type-II superconductors and incommensurate systems are given. More detailed calculations are possible for one-dimensional, Bethe-lattice or the hierarchical Dyson model systems, which confirm as a rule the more approximate treatment of the other sections. In one dimension there is an interesting relation between the statistical mechanics of these models and nonlinear dynamics. Non-classical critical behaviour occurs in RF systems for d<6 and is determined in general by three independent exponents which fulfil certain inequalities. The new exponent θ≡yJ>0 is related to the violation of conventional hyperscaling and is determined by the energy ~H0ξ0 of a correlated region of size ξ. In a renormalization group treatment, the temperature T turns out to be a (dangerous) irrelevant variable which is the most prominent property of the systems considered in this review. The irrelevance of thermal fluctuations on large scales produces metastability and hysteresis effects both in the transition region and in the ordered phase, only briefly considered here. These features occur also in other systems with a disordered T=0 fixed point like in the ordered phase of a spin-glass.
A review is given on some recent developments in the theory of the Ising model in a random field. This model is a good representation of a large number of impure materials. After a short repetition of earlier arguments, which prove the absence of ferromagnetic order in d≤2 space dimensions for uncorrelated random fields, we consider different random field correlations and in particular the generation of uncorrelated from anti-correlated random fields by thermal fluctuations. In discussing the phase transition, we consider the transition to be characterized by a divergent correlation length and compare the critical exponents obtained from various methods (real space RNG, Monte Carlo calculations, weighted mean field theory etc.). The ferromagnetic transition is believed to be preceded by a spin glass transition which manifests itself by replica symmetry breaking. In the discussion of dynamical properties, we concentrate mainly on the zero temperature depinning transition of a domain wall, which represents a critical point far from equilibrium with new scaling relations and critical exponents.
A variety of phenomena is observed experimentally in random-field (RF) systems realized by the application of an external field to diluted antiferromagnets. At low temperatures, infinitely long hysteretic effects are manifested by the history dependence of the final states: long-range order is observed if the field is applied after cooling, while domain states are reached when field cooled. While no indications for critical fluctuations are detected in 2-D systems, scaling behavior, for both the correlation length and the specific heat, is observed in 3-D systems over an intermediate range of temperatures. The related critical properties seem to be well described by the corresponding ones in the 2-D pure Ising model. The renormalization-group approach, which yields for the equilibrium critical exponents their values of the pure model in d−2 dimensions, is reviewed. A generalization of the dimensional-reduction approach, which accounts self-consistently for renormalized responses of the RF system, is presented. The dynamical effects are implicitly incorporated through the variation in the critical response between the local and the global regimes, associated with short- and long-time scales, respectively. In both regimes the lower critical dimension is found to be d=2 in accordance with stability arguments. The short-time critical behavior indicates a dimensional reduction by one for the 3-D thermal exponents, in agreement with the experimental results.
Analytic phenomenological scaling is carried out for the random field Ising model in general dimensions d using a bar geometry. Domain wall configurations and their decorated profiles and associated wandering and other exponents (ζ,γ,δ,μ) are obtained by free-energy minimization. Scaling between different bar widths provides the renormalization group (RG) transformation. Its consequences are i) criticality at h = T = 0 in d ⩽ 2 with correlation length ξ( h , T ) diverging like ξ( h ,0) ∝ h −2/(2 − d ) for d < 2 and ξ( h ,0) ∝ exp [1/( c 1 γ h γ )] for d = 2, where c 1 is a decoration constant; ii) criticality in d = 2 + ε dimensions at T = 0, h * = (ε/2 c 1 ) 1/γ , where ξ ∝ [( s − s *)/ s ] −2ε/γ , s ≡ h γ . Finite-temperature generalizations are outlined. Numerical transfer matrix calculations and results from a ground-state algorithm adapted for strips in d = 2 confirm the ingredients which provide the RG description.
The problem of the lower critical dimension (LCD) of spin systems in random fields is discussed. The different theoretical predictions for the Ising case-i.e. LCD=2 from considerations of domain wall roughening but LCD=3 from diagrammatic renormalisation-are related to different results for the spectral function Delta (q) of the dressed static-field fluctuations-i.e. LCD=3 is obtained if Delta (q) diverges as xi eta with increasing thermal correlation length xi , while LCD=2 corresponds to a non-divergent Delta (q). This difference is analogous to the difference between the true value of the dynamical critical exponent z of a pure ferromagnetic spin system and the 'conventional approximation' z=2- eta . In this way, the weak point of the arguments leading to LCD=2 is discovered, namely the neglect of certain 'mode couplings' between fluctuations with different q or, more pictorially, the neglect of 'domains within domains', and thus the result LCD=2 is seen to be no longer credible. The domain argument leading to LCD=2 are modified by replacing the bare fields by 'dressed' ones; in this way, they are reconciled with the field theoretic result LCD=3.
The nonequilibrium dynamics of classical random Ising spin chains with nonconserved magnetization are studied using an asymptotically exact real space renormalization group (RSRG). We focus on random field Ising model (RFIM) spin chains with and without a uniform applied field, as well as on Ising spin glass chains in an applied field. For the RFIM we consider a universal regime where the random field and the temperature are both much smaller than the exchange coupling. In this regime, the Imry-Ma length that sets the scale of the equilibrium correlations is large and the coarsening of domains from random initial conditions (e.g., a quench from high temperature) occurs over a wide range of length scales. The two types of domain walls that occur diffuse in opposite random potentials, of the form studied by Sinai, and domain walls annihilate when they meet. Using the RSRG we compute many universal asymptotic properties of both the nonequilibrium dynamics and the equilibrium limit. We find that the configurations of the domain walls converge rapidly toward a set of system-specific time-dependent positions that are independent of the initial conditions. Thus the behavior of this nonequilibrium system is pseudodeterministic at long times because of the broad distributions of barriers that occur on the long length scales involved. Specifically, we obtain the time dependence of the energy, the magnetization, and the distribution of domain sizes (found to be statistically independent). The equilibrium limits agree with known exact results. We obtain the exact scaling form of the two-point equal time correlation function <S0(t)Sx(t)> and the two-time autocorrelations <S0(t('))S0(t)>. We also compute the persistence properties of a single spin, of local magnetization, and of domains. The analogous quantities for the +/-J Ising spin glass in an applied field are obtained from the RFIM via a gauge transformation. In addition to these we compute the two-point two-time correlation function <S0(t)Sx(t)><S0(t('))Sx(t('))> which can in principle be measured by experiments on spin-glass-like systems. The thermal fluctuations are studied and found to be dominated by rare events; in particular all moments of truncated equal time correlations are computed. Physical properties which are typically measured in aging experiments are also studied, focusing on the response to a small magnetic field which is applied after waiting for the system to equilibrate for a time t(w). The nonequilibrium fluctuation-dissipation ratio X(t,t(w)) is computed. We find that for (t-t(w)) approximately t(alpha)(w) with alpha;<1, the ratio equal to its equilibrium value X=1, although time translational invariance does not hold in this regime. For t-t(w) approximately t(w) the ratio exhibits an aging regime with a nontrivial X=X(t/t(w)) not equal to 1, but the behavior is markedly different from mean field theory. Finally the distribution of the total magnetization and of the number of domains is computed for large finite size systems. General issues about convergence toward equilibrium and the possibilities of weakly history-dependent evolution in other random systems are discussed.
The nature of the zero-temperature ordering transition in the three-dimensional Gaussian random-field Ising magnet is studied numerically, aided by scaling analyses. Various numerical calculations are used to consistently infer the location of the transition to a high precision. A variety of boundary conditions are imposed on large samples to study the order of the transition and the number of states in the large volume limit. In the ferromagnetic phase, where the domain walls have fractal dimension ds=2, the scaling of the roughness of the domain walls, $w\ensuremath{\sim}{L}^{\ensuremath{\zeta}},$ is consistent with the theoretical prediction $\ensuremath{\zeta}=2/3.$ As the randomness is increased through the transition, the probability distribution of the interfacial tension of domain walls scales in a manner that is clearly consistent with a single second-order transition. At the critical point, the fractal dimensions of domain walls and the fractal dimension of the outer surface of spin clusters are investigated: there are at least two distinct physically important fractal dimensions that describe domain walls. These dimensions are argued to be related by scaling to combinations of the energy scaling exponent $\ensuremath{\theta},$ which determines the violation of hyperscaling, the correlation length exponent $\ensuremath{\nu},$ and the magnetization exponent $\ensuremath{\beta}.$ The value $\ensuremath{\beta}=0.017\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.005$ computed from finite-size scaling of the magnetization is very nearly zero: this estimate is supported by the study of the spin cluster size distribution at criticality. The variation of configurations in the interior of a sample with boundary conditions is consistent with the hypothesis that there is a single transition separating the disordered phase with one ground state from the ordered phase with two ground states. The array of results, including values for several exponents, are shown to be consistent with a scaling picture and a geometric description of the influence of boundary conditions on the spins. The details of the algorithm used and its implementation are also described.