We uncover a new kind of entropic long range order in finite dimensional spin glasses. We study the link-diluted version of the Edwards-Anderson spin glass model with bimodal couplings (J=+/-1) on a 3D lattice. By using exact reduction algorithms, we prove that there exists a region of the phase diagram (at zero temperature and link density low enough), where spins are long range correlated, even if the ground states energy stiffness is null. In other words, in this region twisting the boundary conditions cost no energy, but spins are long range correlated by means of pure entropic effects.
The barriers between metastable states near the glass transition of a random heteropolymer are studied using replicas by describing inhomogeneous states. The instanton solution for a replica space free energy functional is found numerically to estimate the size of activation barriers and of the critical nuclei themselves between the dynamic and the static glass transition temperatures.
We study link-diluted $\pm J$ Ising spin glass models on the hierarchical lattice and on a three-dimensional lattice close to the percolation threshold. We show that previously computed zero temperature fixed points are unstable with respect to temperature perturbations and do not belong to any critical line in the dilution-temperature plane. We discuss implications of the presence of such spurious unstable fixed points on the use of optimization algorithms, and we show how entropic effects should be taken into account to obtain the right physical behavior and critical points.
Trap models describe glassy dynamics as a stochastic process on a network of configurations representing local energy minima. We study within this class the paradigmatic Barrat-Mézard model, which has Glauber transition rates. Our focus is on the effects of the network connectivity, where we go beyond the usual mean field (fully connected) approximation and consider sparse networks, specifically random regular graphs. We obtain the spectral density of relaxation rates of the master operator using the cavity method, revealing very rich behaviour as a function of network connectivity $c$ and tem…
The core idea of stochastic stability is that thermodynamic observables must be robust under small (random) perturbations of the quenched Gibbs measure. Combining this idea with the cavity field technique, which aims to measure the free energy increment under addition of a spin to the system, we sketch how to write a stochastic stability approach to diluted mean field spin glasses which explicitly gives overlap constraints as the outcome. We then show that, under minimal mathematical assumptions and for gauge invariant systems (namely those with even Ising interactions), it is possible to "rev…
A popular Adam--Gibbs scenario has suggested that the excess entropy of glass and liquid over crystal dominates the dynamical arrest at the glass transition with exclusive contribution from configurational entropy over vibrational entropy. However, an intuitive structural rationale for the emergence of frozen dynamics in relation to entropy is still lacking. Here we study these issues by atomistically simulating the vibrational, configurational, as well as total entropy of a model glass former over their crystalline counterparts for the entire temperature range spanning from glass to liquid. B…
We applied a multicanonical algorithm (entropic sampling) to a two-dimensional and a three-dimensional Lennard-Jones system with quasicrystalline and glassy ground states. Focusing on the ability of the algorithm to locate low lying energy states, we compared the results of the multicanonical simulations with standard Monte Carlo simulated annealing and molecular dynamics methods. We find slight benefits to using entropic sampling in small systems (less than 80 particles), which disappear with larger systems. This is disappointing as the multicanonical methods are designed to surmount energy b…
We study numerically the structure of metastable states in the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick spin glass. We find that all non-paramagnetic stationary points of the free energy are organized into pairs, consisting in a minimum and a saddle of order one, which coalesce in the thermodynamic limit. Within the annealed approximation, the entropic contribution of these states, that is the complexity, is compatible with the supersymmetry-breaking calculation performed in [A.J. Bray and M.A. Moore, J. Phys. C, 13 L469 (1980)]. This result indicates that the supersymmetry is spontaneously broken in the Sherr…
Scaling arguments and precise simulations are used to study the square lattice $\pm J$ Ising spin glass, a prototypical model for glassy systems. Droplet theory predicts, and our numerical results show, entropically-stabilized long range spin glass order at zero temperature. The low temperature scaling behavior has an important new crossover length scale that produces a power-law dependence of the heat capacity on temperature.
Monte Carlo algorithms such as the Wang-Landau algorithm and similar `entropic' methods are able to accurately sample the density of states of model systems and thereby give access to thermal equilibrium properties at any temperature. Thermal equilibrium is however not achievable at low temperatures in glassy systems. Such systems are characterized by a multitude of metastable configurations, pictorially referred to as `valleys' of an energy landscape. Geometrical properties of the landscape, e.g. the local density of states describing the distribution in energy of the states belonging to a si…
We explore several potential issues that have been raised over the years regarding the "entropic droplet" scenario of activated transport in liquids, due to Wolynes and coworkers, with the aim of clarifying the status of various approximations of the random first order transition theory (RFOT) of the structural glass transition. In doing so, we estimate the mismatch penalty between alternative aperiodic structures, above the glass transition; the penalty is equal to the typical magnitude of free energy fluctuations in the liquid. The resulting expressions for the activation barrier and the coo…
In this paper, we will investigate critical phenomena by considering a model spin-glass on scale-free networks. For this purpose, we consider the Ghatak-Sherrington (GS) model, a spin-1 spin-glass model with a crystal field, instead of the usual Ising-type model. Scale-free networks on which the GS model is placed are constructed from the static model, in which the number of vertices is fixed from the beginning. On the basis of the replica-symmetric solution, we obtain the analytical solutions, i.e., free energy and order parameters, and we derive the various phase diagrams consisting of the p…
Ground state entropy of the network source location problem is evaluated at both the replica symmetric level and one-step replica symmetry breaking level using the entropic cavity method. The regime that is a focus of this study, is closely related to the vertex cover problem with randomly quenched covered nodes. The resulting entropic message passing inspired decimation and reinforcement algorithms are used to identify the optimal location of sources in single instances of transportation networks. The conventional belief propagation without taking the entropic effect into account is also comp…
By making use of the Langevin dynamics and its generating functional (GF) formulation the influence of the long-range nature of the interaction on the tendency of the glass formation is systematically investigated. In doing so two types of models is considered: (i) the non-disordered model with a pure repulsive type of interaction and (ii) the model with a randomly distributed strength of interaction (a quenched disordered model). The long-ranged potential of interaction is scaled with a number of particles $N$ in such a way as to enable for GF the saddle-point treatment as well as the systema…
We present molecular dynamics results for a two component, two-dimensional Lennard-Jones supercooled liquid near the glass transition. We find that the supercooled liquid is spatially heterogeneous and that there are long-lived clusters whose size distribution satisfies a scaling relation up to a cutoff. The similarity of several properties of the supercooled liquid to those of a mean-field glass-forming fluid near the spinodal suggests that the glass transition in the supercooled liquid is associated with an underlying thermodynamic instability.
The one-dimensional long-range Ising spin glass provides useful insights into the properties of finite dimensional spin glasses with short-range interactions. The defect energy renormalization group equations derived for it by Kotliar, Anderson and Stein have been re-examined and a new fixed point has been found. The fixed points which have previously been studied are found to be inappropriate. It is shown that the renormalization group equations themselves directly imply that the spin glass phase is replica symmetric, in agreement with droplet model expectations, when the range exponent $σ$ l…
In a finite-connectivity spin-glass at the zero-temperature limit, long-range correlations exist among the unfrozen vertices (whose spin values being non-fixed). Such long-range frustrations are partially removed through the first-step replica-symmetry-broken (1RSB) cavity theory, but residual long-range frustrations may still persist in this mean-field solution. By way of population dynamics, here we perform a perturbation-percolation analysis to calculate the magnitude of long-range frustrations in the 1RSB solution of a given spin-glass system. We study two well-studied model systems, the m…
We discuss mean field theory of glasses without quenched disorder focusing on the justification of the replica approach to thermodynamics. We emphasize the assumptions implicit in this method and discuss how they can be verified. The formalism is applied to the long range Ising model with orthogonal coupling matrix. We find the one step replica-symmetry breaking solution and show that it is stable in the intermediate temperature range that includes the glass state but excludes very low temperatures. At very low temperatures this solution becomes unstable and this approach fails.
We use Monte Carlo simulations to study the one-dimensional long-range diluted Heisenberg spin glass with interactions that fall as a power, sigma, of the distance. Varying the power is argued to be equivalent to varying the space dimension of a short-range model. We are therefore able to study both the mean-field and non-mean-field regimes. For one value of sigma, in the non-mean-field regime, we find evidence that the chiral glass transition temperature may be somewhat higher than the spin glass transition temperature. For the other values of sigma we see no evidence for this.
Monte Carlo studies of the 3D random field $XY$ model on simple cubic lattices of size $64^3$, using two different isotropic random-field probability distributions of moderate strength, show a glassy freezing behavior above $T_c$, and long-range order below $T_c$, consistent with our earlier results for weaker and stronger random fields. This model should describe random pinning in vortex lattices in type-II superconducting alloys, charge-density wave materials, and decagonal quasicrystals.
We compare the critical behavior of the short-range Ising spin glass with a spin glass with long-range interactions which fall off as a power sigma of the distance. We show that there is a value of sigma of the long-range model for which the critical behavior is very similar to that of the short-range model in four dimensions. We also study a value of sigma for which we find the critical behavior to be compatible with that of the three dimensional model, though we have much less precision than in the four-dimensional case.
We study the geometrical structure of the states in the low temperature phase of a mean field model for generalized spin glasses, the p-spin spherical model. This structure cannot be revealed by the standard methods, mainly due to the presence of an exponentially high number of states, each one having a vanishing weight in the thermodynamic limit. Performing a purely entropic computation, based on the TAP equations for this model, we define a constrained complexity which gives the overlap distribution of the states. We find that this distribution is continuous, non-random and highly dependent …
We investigate the 3-dimensional Edwards-Anderson spin glass model at low temperature on simple cubic lattices of sizes up to L=12. Our findings show a strong continuity among T>0 physical features and those found previously at T=0, leading to a scenario with emerging mean field like characteristics that are enhanced in the large volume limit. For instance, the picture of space filling sponges seems to survive in the large volume limit at T>0, while entropic effects play a crucial role in determining the free-energy degeneracy of our finite volume states. All of our analysis is applied to equi…
We probe the droplet excitations in short range spin glasses by adding a perturbative long range interaction that decays with distance as a power law: $J/r^σ$. It is shown that if the power law exponent $σ$ is smaller than the spatial dimension $d$, the perturbation induces large scale avalanches which roll until they force the system to develop a pseudo gap in the excitation spectrum of the stabilities. This makes the perturbative long range interactions relevant for $σ< σ_c = d$. The droplet theory predicts that the critical exponent $σ_c$ depends on the droplet stiffness exponent as $σ_c=d-…
It is shown that the limit $t-t'\to\infty$ of the equilibrium dynamic self-energy can be computed from the $n\to 1$ limit of the static self-energy of a $n$-times replicated system with one step replica symmetry breaking structure. It is also shown that the Dyson equation of the replicated system leads in the $n\to 1$ limit to the bifurcation equation for the glass ergodicity breaking parameter computed from dynamics. The equivalence of the replica formalism to the long time limit of the equilibrium relaxation dynamics is proved to all orders in perturbation for a scalar theory.
We analize the statistical mechanics of a long-range antiferromagnetic model defined on a D-dimensional hypercube, both at zero and finite temperatures. The associated Hamiltonian is derived from a recently proposed complexity measure of Boolean functions, in the context of neural networks learning processes. We show that, depending of the value of D, the system either presents a low temperature antiferromagnetic stable phase or the global antiferromagnetic order disappears at any temperature. In the last case the ground state is an infinitely degenerated non-glassy one, composed by two equal …
Long-range spin glass in a field at zero temperature
International Research Center of Complexity Sciences, Hangzhou International Innovation Institute, Beihang University（北京航空航天大学杭州创新研究院复杂性科学国际研究中心）；ISC-CNR, UOS Rome, Sapienza Università di Roma（罗马智慧大学罗马单元意大利国家研究委员会凝聚态物理系统研究所）；Dipartimento di Fisica, Sapienza Università di Roma（罗马智慧大学物理系）；INFN-Sezione di Roma 1（罗马第一意大利国家核物理研究所）；Nanotec-CNR, UOS Rome, Sapienza Università di Roma（罗马智慧大学罗马单元意大利国家研究委员会纳米技术研究所）
It is believed that the $\pm J$ Ising spin-glass does not order at finite temperatures in dimension $d=2$. However, using a graphical representation and a contour argument, we prove rigorously the existence of a finite-temperature phase transition in $d\geq 2$ with $T_c \geq 0.4$. In the graphical representation, the low-temperature phase allows for the coexistence of multiple infinite clusters each with a rigidly aligned spin-overlap state. These clusters correlate negatively with each other, and are entropically stable without breaking any global symmetry. They can emerge in most graph struc…
We demonstrate through two case studies, one on the p-spin interaction model and the other on the random K-satisfiability problem, that a heterogeneity transition occurs to the ground-state configuration space of a random finite-connectivity spin glass system at certain critical value of the constraint density. At the transition point, exponentially many configuration communities emerge from the ground-state configuration space, making the entropy density s(q) of configuration-pairs a non-concave function of configuration-pair overlap q. Each configuration community is a collection of relative…
The paper contains a rigorous proof of the absence of quasi-long-range order in the random-field O(N) model for strong disorder in the space of an arbitrary dimensionality. This result implies that quasi-long-range order inherent to the Bragg glass phase of the vortex system in disordered superconductors is absent as the disorder or external magnetic field is strong.
Properties of the free energy landscape in phase space of a dense hard sphere system characterized by a discretized free energy functional of the Ramakrishnan-Yussouff form are investigated numerically. A considerable number of glassy local minima of the free energy are located and the distribution of an appropriately defined ``overlap'' between minima is calculated. The process of transition from the basin of attraction of a minimum to that of another one is studied using a new ``microcanonical'' Monte Carlo procedure, leading to a determination of the effective height of free energy barriers…
We present a study of the coloring problem (antiferromagnetic Potts model) of random regular graphs, submitted to quantum fluctuations induced by a transverse field, using the quantum cavity method and quantum Monte-Carlo simulations. We determine the order of the quantum phase transition encountered at low temperature as a function of the transverse field and discuss the structure of the quantum spin glass phase. In particular, we conclude that the quantum adiabatic algorithm would fail to solve efficiently typical instances of these problems because of avoided level crossings within the quan…
We study the glass formation in two- and three-dimensional Ising and Heisenberg spin systems subject to competing interactions and uniaxial anisotropy with a mean-field approach. In three dimensions, for sufficiently strong anisotropy the systems always modulates in a striped phase. Below a critical strength of the anisotropy, a glassy phase exists in a finite range of temperature, and it becomes more stable as the system becomes more isotropic. In two dimension the criticality is always avoided and the glassy phase always exists.
Shortened abstract: A mean field theory of long range frustration is constructed for spin glass systems with quenched randomness of vertex--vertex connections and of spin--spin coupling strengths. This theory is applied to a spin glass model of the random $K$-satisfiability problem (K=2 or K=3). The zero--temperature phase diagram of the $\pm J$ Viana--Bray model is also determined, which is identical to that of the random 2-SAT problem. The predicted phase transition between a non-frustrated and a long--rangely frustrated spin glass phase might also be observable in real materials at a finite…
RNA molecules form a sequence-specific self-pairing pattern at low temperatures. We analyze this problem using a random pairing energy model as well as a random sequence model that includes a base stacking energy in favor of helix propagation. The free energy cost for separating a chain into two equal halves offers a quantitative measure of sequence specific pairing. In the low temperature glass phase, this quantity grows quadratically with the logarithm of the chain length, but it switches to a linear behavior of entropic origin in the high temperature molten phase. Transition between the two…
In a spin glass system on a random graph, some vertices have their spins changing among different configurations of a ground--state domain. Long range frustrations may exist among these unfrozen vertices in the sense that certain combinations of spin values for these vertices may never appear in any configuration of this domain. We present a mean field theory to tackle such long range frustrations and apply it to the NP-hard minimum vertex cover (hard-core gas condensation) problem. Our analytical results on the ground-state energy density and on the fraction of frozen vertices are in good agr…
We vary the amplitude of the long-range Coulomb forces within a classical potential describing a model silica glass and study the consequences on the structure and dynamics of the glass, via molecular dynamics simulations. This model allows us to follow the variation of specific features such as the First Sharp Diffraction Peak and the Boson Peak in a system going continuously from a fragile (no Coulomb forces) to a strong (with Coulomb forces) glass. In particular we show that the characteristic features of a strong glass (existence of medium range order, bell-shaped ring size distribution, s…
The ordering of the one-dimensional Heisenberg spin glass interacting via the long-range power-law interaction is studied by Monte Carlo simulations. Particular attention is paid to the possible occurrence of the ``spin-chirality decoupling'' for appropriate values of the power-law exponent σ. Our result suggests that, for intermediate values of $σ$, the chiral-glass order occurs at finite temperatures while the standard spin-glass order occurs only at zero temperature.
We show that the ground state of the periodic long range Josephson array frustrated by magnetic field is a glass for a sufficiently large Josephson energies despite the absence of a quenched disorder. Like superconductors, this glass state has non-zero phase stiffness and Meissner response; for smaller Josephson energies the glass "melts" and the ground state loses the phase stiffness and becomes insulating. We find the critical scaling behavior near this quantum phase transition: the excitation gap vanishes as (J-J_c)^2, the frequency-dependent magnetic susceptibility behaves as χ(ω) ~ \sqrtω…
We study the issue of the spin-chirality decoupling/coupling in the ordering of the Heisenberg spin glass by performing large-scale Monte Carlo simulations on a one-dimensional Heisenberg spin-glass model with a long-range power-law interaction up to large system sizes. We find that the spin-chirality decoupling occurs for an intermediate range of the power-law exponent. Implications to the corresponding $d$-dimensional short-range model is discussed.
The one-dimensional Ising spin-glass model with power-law long-range interactions is a useful proxy model for studying spin glasses in higher space dimensions and for finding the dimension at which the spin-glass state changes from having broken replica symmetry to that of droplet behavior. To this end we have calculated the exponent that describes the difference in free energy between periodic and antiperiodic boundary conditions. Numerical work is done to support some of the assumptions made in the calculations and to determine the behavior of the interface free-energy exponent of the power …
We study a p-spin spin-glass model to understand if the finite-temperature glass transition found in the mean-field regime of p-spin models, and used to model the behavior of structural glasses, persists in the non-mean-field regime. By using a 3-spin spin-glass model with long-range power-law diluted interactions we are able to continuously tune the (effective) space dimension via the exponent of the interactions. Monte Carlo simulations of the spin-glass susceptibility and the two-point finite-size correlation length show that deep in the non-mean-field regime the finite-temperature transiti…
The fractal dimension of excitations in glassy systems gives information on the critical dimension at which the droplet picture of spin glasses changes to a description based on replica symmetry breaking where the interfaces are space filling. Here, the fractal dimension of domain-wall interfaces is studied using the strong-disorder renormalization group method pioneered by Monthus [Fractals 23, 1550042 (2015)] both for the Edwards-Anderson spin-glass model in up to 8 space dimensions, as well as for the one-dimensional long-ranged Ising spin-glass with power-law interactions. Analyzing the fr…
The long-range one-dimensional Ising spin-glass with random couplings decaying as $J(r) \propto r^{-σ}$ presents a spin-glass phase $T_c(σ)>0$ for $0 \leq σ<1$ (the limit $σ=0$ corresponds to the mean-field SK-model). We use the eigenvalue method introduced in our previous work [C. Monthus and T. Garel, J. Stat. Mech. P12017 (2009)] to measure the equilibrium time $t_{eq}(N)$ at temperature $T=T_c(σ)/2$ as a function of the number $N$ of spins. We find the activated scaling $\ln t_{eq}(N) \sim N^ψ$ with the same barrier exponent $ψ\simeq 0.33$ in the whole region $0\leqσ<1$.
We explore the stability of far-from-equilibrium metastable states of a three-dimensional Coulomb glass at zero temperature by studying charge avalanches triggered by a slowly varying external electric field. Surprisingly, we identify a sharply defined dynamical ("depinning") phase transition from stationary to nonstationary charge displacement at a critical value of the external electric field. Using particle-conserving dynamics, scale-free system-spanning avalanches are observed only at the critical field. We show that the qualitative features of this depinning transition are completely diff…
We consider the long-ranged Ising spin-glass with random couplings decaying as a power-law of the distance, in the region of parameters where the spin-glass phase exists with a positive droplet exponent. For the Metropolis single-spin-flip dynamics near zero temperature, we construct via real-space renormalization the full hierarchy of relaxation times of the master equation for any given realization of the random couplings. We then analyze the probability distribution of dynamical barriers as a function of the spatial scale. This real-space renormalization procedure represents a simple explic…
We have investigated critical phenomena in spin glasses RxY1-xRu2Si2 (R = Dy, Tb, Gd). These compounds, where the magnetic moments of rare-earth ions interact by the long-range Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yoshida (RKKY) interaction via conduction electrons, has uniaxial magnetic anisotropy. The separation of the zero-field-cooled and field-cooled magnetization was found only along the c-axis in all compounds, and hence, they are classified into the long-range Ising spin glass. The magnetic anisotropic energies in these compounds are different from each other in two orders of magnitude, from 330 K t…
We study models of itinerant spinless fermions with random long-range interactions. We motivate such models from descriptions of fermionic atoms in multi-mode optical cavities. The solution of an infinite-range model yields a metallic phase which has glassy charge dynamics, and a localized glass phase with suppressed density of states at low energies. We compare these phases to the conventional disordered Fermi liquid, and the insulating electron glass of semiconductors. Prospects for the realization of such glassy phases in cold atom systems are discussed.
Ising spin-glass systems with long-range interactions ($J(r)\sim r^{-σ}$) are considered. A numerical study of the critical behaviour is presented in the non-mean-field region together with an analysis of the probability distribution of the overlaps and of the ultrametric structure of the space of the equilibrium configurations in the frozen phase. Also in presence of diverging thermodynamical fluctuations at the critical point the behaviour of the model is shown to be of the Replica Simmetry Breaking type and there are hints of a non-trivial ultrametric structure. The parallel tempering algor…
We present results of a Monte Carlo study of the equilibrium dynamics of the one dimensional long-range Ising spin glass model. By tuning a parameter $σ$, this model interpolates between the mean field Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model and a proxy of the finite dimensional Edward-Anderson model. Activated scaling fits for the behavior of the relaxation time $τ$ as a function of the number of spins $N$ (Namely $\ln(τ)\propto N^ψ$) give values of $ψ$ that are not stable against inclusion of subleading corrections. Critical scaling ($τ\propto N^ρ$) gives more stable fits, at least in the non mean fie…
A simple model to investigate the long time dynamics of glass-formers is presented and applied to study a Lennard-Jones system in supercooled and glassy phases. According to our model, the point representing the system in the configurational phase space performs harmonic vibrations around (and activated jumps between) minima pertaining to a connected network. Exploiting the model, in agreement with the experimental results, we find evidence for: i) stretched relaxational dynamics; ii) a strong T-dependence of the stretching parameter; iii) breakdown of the Stokes-Einstein law.
We use a confocal microscope to examine the motion of individual particles in a dense colloidal suspension. Close to the glass transition, particle motion is strongly spatially correlated. The correlations decay exponentially with particle separation, yielding a dynamic length scale of O(2-3 sigma) (in terms of particle diameter sigma). This length scale grows modestly as the glass transition is approached. Further, the correlated motion exhibits a strong spatial dependence on the pair correlation function g(r). Motion within glassy samples is weakly correlated, but with a larger spatial scale…
In this review we consider glass states of several disordered systems: vortices in impure superconductors, amorphous magnets, and nematic liquid crystals in random porous media. All these systems can be described by the random-field or random-anisotropy O(N) model. Even arbitrarily weak disorder destroys long range order in the O(N) model. We demonstrate that at weak disorder and low temperatures quasi-long range order emerges. In quasi-long-range-ordered phases the correlation length is infinite and correlation functions obey power dependencies on the distance. In pure systems quasi-long rang…
