Skip to main content
Top

2009 | Book

Spin Glasses: Statics and Dynamics

Summer School, Paris 2007

Editors: Anne Boutet de Monvel, Anton Bovier

Publisher: Birkhäuser Basel

Book Series : Progress in Probability

insite
SEARCH

About this book

Over the last decade, spin glass theory has turned from a fascinating part of t- oretical physics to a ?ourishing and rapidly growing subject of probability theory as well. These developments have been triggered to a large part by the mathem- ical understanding gained on the fascinating and previously mysterious “Parisi solution” of the Sherrington–Kirkpatrick mean ?eld model of spin glasses, due to the work of Guerra, Talagrand, and others. At the same time, new aspects and applications of the methods developed there have come up. The presentvolumecollects a number of reviewsaswellas shorterarticlesby lecturers at a summer school on spin glasses that was held in July 2007 in Paris. These articles range from pedagogical introductions to state of the art papers, covering the latest developments. In their whole, they give a nice overview on the current state of the ?eld from the mathematical side. The review by Bovier and Kurkova gives a concise introduction to mean ?eld models, starting with the Curie–Weiss model and moving over the Random Energymodels up to the Parisisolutionof the Sherrington–Kirkpatrikmodel. Ben Arous and Kuptsov present a more recent view and disordered systems through the so-called local energy statistics. They emphasize that there are many ways to look at Hamiltonians of disordered systems that make appear the Random Energy model (or independent random variables) as a universal mechanism for describing certain rare events. An important tool in the analysis of spin glasses are correlation identities.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter

Mean Field

Frontmatter
A Short Course on Mean Field Spin Glasses
Abstract
We give a brief introduction to the theory of mean field models of spin glasses. This includes a concise presentation of the Random Energy model and the Generalized Random Energy model and the connection to the corresponding asymptotic models based on Poisson cascades. We also explain the nature of the Parisi solution of the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model and its derivation via Gaussian interpolation methods.
Anton Bovier, Irina Kurkova
REM Universality for Random Hamiltonians
Abstract
We survey in this paper a universality phenomenon which shows that some characteristics of complex random energy landscapes are model-independent, or universal. This universality, called REM-universality, was discovered by S. Mertens and H. Bauke in the context of combinatorial optimization. We survey recent advances on the extent of this REM-universality for equilibrium as well as dynamical properties of spin glasses. We also focus on the limits of REM-universality, i.e., when it ceases to be valid.
Gérard Ben Arous, Alexey Kuptsov
Another View on Aging in the REM
Abstract
We give a new proof of aging for a version of a Glauber dynamics in the Random Energy Model. The proof uses ideas that were developed in [2] for studying the dynamics of a p-spin Sherrington-Kirkpatrick spin glass.
Jiří Černý
Spin Glass Identities and the Nishimori Line
Abstract
For a general spin glass model with asymmetric couplings we prove a family of identities involving expectations of generalized overlaps and magnetizations in the quenched state. Those identities hold pointwise in the Nishimori line and are reached at the rate of the inverse volume while, in the general case, they can be proved in integral average.
Pierluigi Contucci, Cristian Giardinà, Hidetoshi Nishimori
Self-averaging Identities for Random Spin Systems
Abstract
We provide a systematic treatment of self-averaging identities, whose validity is proven in integral average, for dilute spin glasses. The method is quite general, and as a special case recovers the Ghirlanda—Guerra identities, which are therefore proven, together with their extension, to be valid in dilute spin glasses. We focus on dilute spin glasses, but the results hold in all models enjoying stability with respect to the perturbations we introduce; although such a stability is believed to hold for several models, we do not classify them here.
Luca De Sanctis, Silvio Franz
Chaos in Mean-field Spin-glass Models
Abstract
Physicists understand mean-field spin-glass models as possessing a complex free-energy landscape with many equilibrium states. The problem of chaos concerns the evolution of this landscape upon changing the external parameters of the system and is considered relevant for the interpretation of important features of real spin-glass and for understanding the performance of numerical algorithms. The subject is strongly related to that of constrained systems which is considered by mathematicians the natural framework for proving rigorously some of the most peculiar properties of Parisi’s replicasymmetry-breaking solution of mean-field spin-glass models, notably ultrametricity. Many aspects of the problems turned out to possess an unexpected level of difficulty and are still open. We present the results of the physics literature on the subject and discuss the main unsolved problems from a wider perspective.
Tommaso Rizzo
A non Gaussian Limit Law for the Covariances of Spins in a SK Model with an External Field
Abstract
We give an overview of the main steps of the proof of a non gaussian limit theorem for the covariance, for Gibbs’ measure, of spins at two fixed sites in a SK model with an external field.
Albert Hanen
A Limit Theorem for Mean Magnetisation in the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick Model with an External Field
Abstract
Some properties of mean magnetization (i.e., mean spin) are established in the case of a SK model with an external field, and a central limit theorem is proved.
Albert Hanen

Non-mean Field

Frontmatter
A Percolation-theoretic Approach to Spin Glass Phase Transitions
Abstract
The magnetically ordered, low temperature phase of Ising ferromagnets is manifested within the associated Fortuin—Kasteleyn (FK) random cluster representation by the occurrence of a single positive density percolating cluster. In this paper, we review our recent work on the percolation signature for Ising spin glass ordering — both in the short-range Edwards—Anderson (EA) and infinite-range Sherrington—Kirkpatrick (SK) models — within a tworeplica FK representation and also in the different Chayes—Machta—Redner two-replica graphical representation. Numerical studies of the ±J EA model in dimension three and rigorous results for the SK model are consistent in supporting the conclusion that the signature of spin-glass order in these models is the existence of a single percolating cluster of maximal density normally coexisting with a second percolating cluster of lower density.
Jonathan Machta, Charles M. Newman, Daniel L. Stein
Fluctuations in Finite-dimensional Spin-glass Dynamics
Abstract
We present a very short summary of a theory of dynamic fluctuations in glassy systems that is based on the assumption that a symmetry, time-reparametrization invariance, develops asymptotically in these systems and that it is responsible for spatio-temporal fluctuations. Here we focus primarily on the application of these ideas to disordered spin models with an energy function.
Claudio Chamon, Leticia F. Cugliandolo

Disordered Pinning Models

Frontmatter
Renewal Sequences, Disordered Potentials, and Pinning Phenomena
Abstract
We give an overview of the state of the art of the analysis of disordered models of pinning on a defect line. This class of models includes a number of well-known and much studied systems (like polymer pinning on a defect line, wetting of interfaces on a disordered substrate and the Poland-Scheraga model of DNA denaturation). A remarkable aspect is that, in absence of disorder, all the models in this class are exactly solvable and they display a localization-delocalization transition that one understands in full detail. Moreover the behavior of such systems near criticality is controlled by a parameter and one observes, by tuning the parameter, the full spectrum of critical behaviors, ranging from first-order to infinite-order transitions. This is therefore an ideal set-up in which to address the question of the effect of disorder on the phase transition, notably on critical properties. We will review recent results that show that the physical prediction that goes under the name of Harris criterion is indeed fully correct for pinning models. Beyond summarizing the results, we will sketch most of the arguments of proof.
Giambattista Giacomin
A Smoothing Inequality for Hierarchical Pinning Models
Abstract
We consider a hierarchical pinning model introduced by B. Derrida, V. Hakim and J. Vannimenus in [3], which undergoes a localization/delocalization phase transition. This depends on a parameter B > 2, related to the geometry of the hierarchical lattice. We prove that the phase transition is of second order in presence of disorder. This implies that disorder smoothes the transition in the so-called relevant disorder case, i.e., \( B > B_c = 2 + \sqrt 2 \).
Hubert Lacoin, Fabio Lucio Toninelli
Metadata
Title
Spin Glasses: Statics and Dynamics
Editors
Anne Boutet de Monvel
Anton Bovier
Copyright Year
2009
Publisher
Birkhäuser Basel
Electronic ISBN
978-3-7643-9891-0
Print ISBN
978-3-7643-8999-4
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7643-9891-0