We numerically study the nonequilibrium dynamics of the three-dimensional Heisenberg Edwards-Anderson spin glass following a sudden quench to its low-temperature phase. The subsequent aging behavior of the system is analyzed in detail, and the scaling behavior of various space-time correlation functions is investigated for both spin and chiral degrees of freedom. We carefully compare our results with those obtained from simulations of the more studied Ising version of the model, and with experiments on real spin glasses in which the spins have vectorial character. Finally, the present dynamical study offers perspectives into the possibility of spin-chirality decoupling at low temperature in vectorial spin glasses.
The deviations from full or pure aging behavior, i.e. perfect
t/tw scaling of the correlation and response functions of aging glassy systems, are not well understood theoretically. Recent experiments of Rodriguez et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 037203 (2003)) have shown that full aging applies to the thermoremanent magnetization in the limit of infinite cooling rate during the initial quench. In numerical models, instantaneous thermal quenches can be--and usually are--applied. This has motivated the present numerical investigations of the aging behavior of Edwards-Anderson Ising spin glass models with both short- and long-range Gaussian interactions, respectively. We sample the distribution of residence time
t in suitably defined metastable valleys entered at age
tw, finding that the deviations from
t/tw scaling are small and decrease systematically as the system size grows and/or the temperature decreases. Finally, the connection between this behavior and the scaling of the correlation function itself is discussed.