Scaling in a Space of Spin-Glass States

Sven Schubert, Karl Heinz Hoffmann

Helmut G. Katzgraber, A. P. Young

Results are presented for the geometry of low-energy excitations in the one-dimensional Ising spin chain with power-law interactions, in which the model parameters are chosen to yield a finite spin-glass transition temperature. Both finite-temperature and ground-state studies are carried out. For the range of sizes studied the data cannot be fitted to any of the standard spin-glass scenarios without including corrections to scaling. Incorporating such corrections we find that the fractal dimension of the surface of the excitations, is either equal to the space dimension, consistent with replica symmetry breaking, or very slightly less than it. The latter case is consistent with the droplet and ``trivial-nontrivial'' pictures.

Philip Warren Anderson

L. Bernardi, Ney Lemke, Pierre‐Olivier Mari +3 more

G. F. Rodriguez, G. G. Kenning, R. Orbach

The discovery of dynamic memory effects in the magnetization decays of spin glasses in 1983 marked a turning point in the study of the highly disordered spin glass state. Detailed studies of the memory effects have led to much progress in understanding the qualitative features of the phase space. Even so, the exact nature of the magnetization decay functions has remained elusive, causing confusion. In this Letter, we report strong evidence that the thermoremanent magnetization decays scale with the waiting time t(w). By employing a series of cooling protocols, we demonstrate that the rate at which the sample is cooled to the measuring temperature plays a major role in the determination of scaling. As the effective cooling time t(eff)(c) decreases, t/t(w) scaling improves and for t(eff)(c)<20 s we find almost perfect t/t(w) scaling, i.e., full aging.

J. Houdayer, Florent Krząkała, Olivier Martin

We numerically extract large-scale excitations above the ground state in the 3-dimensional Edwards-Anderson spin glass with Gaussian couplings. We find that associated energies are O(1), in agreement with the mean field picture. Of further interest are the position-space properties of these excitations. First, our study of their topological properties show that the majority of the large-scale excitations are sponge-like. Second, when probing their geometrical properties, we find that the excitations coarsen when the system size is increased. We conclude that either finite size effects are very large even when the spin overlap q is close to zero, or the mean field picture of homogeneous excitations has to be modified.