A theoretical description of the low-temperature phase of short-range spin glasses has remained elusive for decades. In particular, it is unclear if theories that assert a single pair of pure states, or theories that are based on infinitely many pure states---such as replica symmetry breaking---best describe realistic short-range systems. To resolve this controversy, the three-dimensional Edwards-Anderson Ising spin glass in thermal boundary conditions is studied numerically using population annealing Monte Carlo. In thermal boundary conditions all eight combinations of periodic vs antiperiodic boundary conditions in the three spatial directions appear in the ensemble with their respective Boltzmann weights, thus minimizing finite-size corrections due to domain walls. From the relative weighting of the eight boundary conditions for each disorder instance a sample stiffness is defined, and its typical value is shown to grow with system size according to a stiffness exponent. An extrapolation to the large-system-size limit is in agreement with a description that supports the droplet picture and other theories that assert a single pair of pure states. The results are, however, incompatible with the mean-field replica symmetry breaking picture, thus highlighting the need to go beyond mean-field descriptions to accurately describe short-range spin-glass systems.
Using ground state computations, we study the transition from a spin glass to a ferromagnet in 3D spin glasses when changing the mean value of the spin-spin interaction. We find good evidence for replica symmetry breaking up until the critical value where ferromagnetic ordering sets in, and no ferromagnetic spin glass phase. This phase diagram is in conflict with the droplet/scaling and mean field theories of spin glasses. We also find that the exponents of the second order ferromagnetic transition do not depend on the microscopic Hamiltonian, suggesting universality of this transition.
We investigate the balanced
M=4,
p=4 spin-glass model for a one-dimensional long-range proxy for the finite dimensional short-range
p-spin glass model to examine the nature of the glass transition beyond mean-field theory. We perform large-scale Monte Carlo equilibrated simulations for both fully connected and power-law diluted versions of the model. The critical temperatures extracted from the finite-size scaling (FSS) analysis of spin-glass susceptibility are in good agreement with theoretical predictions for
σ=0,0.25, and 0.55. For these values of the long-range exponent
σ (which is the power of the decrease of the interactions between the spins with their separation), one might have expected that mean-field theory would provide a good description of the system. However, the spin-overlap distribution and the value of the
λ-parameter do not provide numerical evidence for a one-step replica symmetry breaking (1RSB) phase transition. Instead, our results indicate a direct transition from the paramagnetic state to a full replica symmetry broken phase, with a renormalized value of
λ≡ω2/ω1<1 suggesting a continuous FRSB transition, despite this ratio being equal to 2 at mean-field level. A value of
λ>1 is required for the discontinuous 1RSB transition. We argue that strong finite-size effects and closely spaced transition temperatures remove the expected 1RSB transition for the system sizes which we can study. For values of the exponent
σ=0.85, which roughly corresponds to a three dimensional system, we find that the renormalized value of
λ is again less than 1, with no signs of either the 1RSB transition or the continuous FRSB transition, suggesting that the Kauzmann temperature
TK in three dimensions might be zero and the complete absence of phase transitions in structural glasses.
We study a short-range site-random Ising model in three dimensions (3D) using a Monte Carlo (MC) method and find a phase transition to a spin glass (SG) phase at a very high temperature ( T c ≃2.83 J). Values of the critical exponents estimated from a finite-size scaling analysis are different from those in both the 3D
∓J Ising model and the 3D Ising ferromagnet. We suggest that the SG phase in this model is a new SG phase which is characterized by a nonzero SG order parameter q ≠0.
Spontaneous symmetry breaking phenomena in the transverse field mixed
p-spin glass model in finite dimensions are studied with Nishimori's gauge theory. Useful identities in the gauge theory enable us to study
Z2-symmetry breaking. It is proven that ferromagnetic long-range order and spontaneous magnetization at an arbitrary temperature are bounded by those on the Nishimori line in the corresponding classical model. These bounds imply that neither ferromagnetic long-range order nor spontaneous magnetization exists in spin glass phase. It is proven also that the ferromagnetic susceptibility has an upper bound in paramagnetic and spin glass phases.