We report on results of nonequilibrium transport measurements made on thin films of germanium-telluride (Ge_xTe) at cryogenic temperatures. Owing to a rather large deviation from stoichiometry (app. 10% of Ge vacancies), these films exhibit p-type conductivity with carrier-concentration N>10^20cm^(-3) and can be made either in the diffusive or strongly-localized regime by a judicious choice of preparation and post-treatment conditions. In both regimes the system shows persistent photoconductivity following excitation by a brief exposure to infrared radiation. Persistent photoconductivity is also observed in GexTe samples alloyed with Mn. However, in both Ge_xTe and GeMn_xTe_y the effect is much weaker than that observable in GeSb_xTe_y alloys suggesting that antimony plays an important role in the phenomenon. Structural studies of these films reveal an unusual degree of texture that is rarely realized in strongly-disordered systems with high carrier-concentrations. Anderson-localized samples of Ge_xTe exhibit non-ergodic transport which are characteristic of intrinsic electron-glasses, including a well developed memory-dip and slow relaxation of the excess conductance created in the excited state. These results support the conjecture that electron-glass effects with inherently long relaxation times is a generic property of all Anderson-localized systems with large carrier-concentration.
Nonequilibrium dynamics of the $\pm J$ Ising, the {\it XY}, and the Heisenberg spin-glass models are investigated in three dimensions. A nonequilibrium dynamic exponent is calculated from the dynamic correlation length. The spin-glass dynamic exponent continuously depends on the temperature. There is no anomaly at the critical temperature as is recently reported by Katzgraber and Campbell. On the other hand, the chiral-glass dynamic exponent takes a constant value above the spin-glass transition temperature ($T_\mathrm{sg}$), and becomes temperature-dependent below $T_\mathrm{sg}$.The finite-t…
We employ Monte Carlo simulations to investigate the two-time density autocorrelation function for the two-dimensional Coulomb glass. We find that the nonequilibrium relaxation properties of this highly correlated disordered system can be described by a full aging scaling ansatz. The scaling exponents are non-universal, and depend on temperature and charge density.
The real part of the time-dependent ac susceptibility of the short-range Ising spin glass in a transverse field has been investigated at very low temperatures. We have used the quantum linear response theory and domain coarsening ideas of quantum droplet scaling theory. It is found that after a temperature quench to a temperature which is less than the spin glass transition temperature the ac susceptibility decreases with time elapsed after the initial quench towards equilibrium approximately logarithmically. It is shown that the transverse field of "tunneling" has nonessential effect to a non…
We study the non-equilibrium aging behavior of the gauge glass model in three dimensions at the critical temperature. We perform Monte Carlo simulations with a Metropolis update, and correlation and response functions are calculated for different waiting times. We obtain a multiplicative aging scaling of the correlation and response functions, calculating the aging exponent $b$ and the nonequilibrium autocorrelation decay exponent $λ_c/z_c$. We also analyze the fluctuation-dissipation relationship at the critical temperature, obtaining the critical fluctuation-dissipation ratio $X_\infty$. By …
The relaxations of conductivity have been studied in the glassy regime of a strongly disordered two-dimensional electron system in Si after a temporary change of carrier density during the waiting time t_w. Two types of response have been observed: a) monotonic, where relaxations exhibit aging, i.e. dependence on history, determined by t_w and temperature; b) nonmonotonic, where a memory of the sample history is lost. The conditions that separate the two regimes have been also determined.
We study numerically the nonequilibrium dynamics of the Ising Spin Glass, for a time that spans eleven orders of magnitude, thus approaching the experimentally relevant scale (i.e. {\em seconds}). We introduce novel analysis techniques that allow to compute the coherence length in a model-independent way. Besides, we present strong evidence for a replicon correlator and for overlap equivalence. The emerging picture is compatible with non-coarsening behavior.
We numerically study the three-dimensional Edwards-Anderson model with Gaussian couplings, focusing on the heterogeneities arising in its nonequilibrium dynamics. Results are analyzed in terms of the backbone picture, which links strong dynamical heterogeneities to spatial heterogeneities emerging from the correlation of local rigidity of the bond network. Different two-times quantities as the flipping time distribution and the correlation and response functions, are evaluated over the full system and over high- and low-rigidity regions. We find that the nonequilibrium dynamics of the model is…
We have studied numerically the dynamics of spin glasses with Ising and XY symmetry (gauge glass) in space dimensions 2, 3, and 4. The nonequilibrium spin-glass susceptibility and the nonequilibrium energy per spin of samples of large size L_b are measured as a function of anneal time t_w after a quench to temperatures T. The two observables are compared to the equilibrium spin-glass susceptibility and the equilibrium energy, respectively, measured as functions of temperature T and system size L for a range of system sizes. For any time and temperature a nonequilibrium time-dependent length sc…
Motivated by short-range Ising spin glasses, we review some rigorous results and their consequences for the relation between the number/nature of equilibrium pure states and nonequilibrium dynamics. Two of the consequences for spin glass dynamics following a deep quench to a temperature with broken spin flip symmetry are: (1) Almost all initial configurations lie on the boundary between the basins of attraction of multiple pure states. (2) Unless there are uncountably many pure states with almost all pairs having zero overlap, there can be no equilibration to a pure state as time goes to infin…
We study the equilibrium and nonequilibrium properties of Boolean decision problems with competing interactions on scale-free networks in an external bias (magnetic field). Previous studies at zero field have shown a remarkable equilibrium stability of Boolean variables (Ising spins) with competing interactions (spin glasses) on scale-free networks. When the exponent that describes the power-law decay of the connectivity of the network is strictly larger than 3, the system undergoes a spin-glass transition. However, when the exponent is equal to or less than 3, the glass phase is stable for al…
The unifying feature of glass formers (such as polymers, supercooled liquids, colloids, granulars, spin glasses, superconductors, ...) is a sluggish dynamics at low temperatures. Indeed, their dynamics is so slow that thermal equilibrium is never reached in macroscopic samples: in analogy with living beings, glasses are said to age. Here, we show how to relate experimentally relevant quantities with the experimentally unreachable low-temperature equilibrium phase. We have performed a very accurate computation of the non-equilibrium fluctuation-dissipation ratio for the three-dimensional Edward…
The critical behavior of the gauge-glass and the XY spin-glass models in three dimensions is studied by analyzing their nonequilibrium aging dynamics. A new numerical method, which relies on the calculation of the two-time correlation and integrated response functions, is used to determine both the critical temperature and the nonequilibrium scaling exponents, both for spin and chiral degrees of freedom. First, the ferromagnetic XY model is studied to validate this nonequilibirum aging method (NAM), since for this nondisordered system we can compare with known results obtained with standard eq…
The dynamic behaviour of glassy materials displays strong nonequilibrium effects, such as ageing in simple protocols, memory, rejuvenation and Kovacs effects in more elaborated experiments. We show that this phenomenology may be easily understood in the context of the nonequilibrium critical dynamics of non-disordered systems, the main ingredient being the existence of an infinite equilibrium correlation length. As an example, we analytically investigate the behaviour of the 2D XY model submitted to temperature protocols similar to experiments. This shows that typical glassy effects may be obt…
The effect of applied magnetic fields on the collective nonequilibrium dynamics of a strongly interacting Fe-C nanoparticle system has been investigated. It is experimentally shown that the magnetic aging diminishes to finally disappear for fields of moderate strength. The field needed to remove the observable aging behavior increases with decreasing temperature. The same qualitative behavior is observed in an amorphous metallic spin glass (Fe_{0.15}Ni_{0.85})_{75}P_{16}B_6Al_3.
Effects of temperature changes on the nonequilibrium spin-glass dynamics of a strongly interacting ferromagnetic nanoparticle system (superspin glass) are studied. In contrary to atomic spin glasses, strong cooling rate effects are observed, and no evidence for temperature-chaos is found. The flip time of a magnetic moment is much longer than that of an atomic spin and hence much shorter time scales are probed within the experimental time window for a superspin glass than for an atomic spin glass. Within a real space picture the cumulative aging observed for the superspin glass can be explaine…
Many-body localized phases may not only be characterized by their ergodicity breaking, but can also host ordered phases such as the many-body localized spin-glass (MBL-SG). The MBL-SG is challenging to access in a dynamical measurement and therefore experimentally since the conventionally used Edwards-Anderson order parameter is a two-point correlation function in time. In this work, we show that many-body localized spin-glass order can also be detected from two-site reduced density matrices, which we use to construct an eigenstate spin-glass order parameter. We find that this eigenstate spin-…
We study numerically the nonequilibrium dynamics of the three-dimensional Heisenberg Edwards-Anderson spin glass submitted to protocols during which temperature is shifted or cycled within the spin glass phase. We show that (partial) rejuvenation and (perfect) memory effects can be numerically observed and study both effects in detail. We quantitatively characterize their dependences on parameters such as the amplitude of the temperature changes, the timescale at which the changes are performed, and the cooling rates used to vary the temperature. We contrast our results both to those found num…
We examine in this work the role of disorder in contributing to the sluggish relaxation observed in intrinsic electron-glasses. Our approach is guided by several empirical observations: First and foremost, Anderson localization is a pre-requisite for observing these nonequilibrium phenomena. Secondly, sluggish relaxation appears to favor Anderson-insulators with relatively large Fermi-energies (hence proportionally large disorder). These observations motivated us to consider a way to measure the underlying disorder in a realistic Anderson insulator. Optical study using a series of amorphous in…
Numerical studies in random systems are plagued with strong finite-size effects and boundary effects. We introduce a window-measurement method as a practical solution to these difficulties. We observe physical quantities only within a subsystem located in the midst of a whole system and scale them with the correlation length estimated in the subsystem. Both equilibrium data and nonequilibrium data with different system sizes and different window sizes fall onto a single scaling function. It suggests that the correction-to-scaling terms become very small. We confirm the validity in the $\pm J$ …
