Thermodynamic glass transition in a spin glass without time-reversal symmetry

Abstract

Spin glasses are a longstanding model for the sluggish dynamics that appears at the glass transition. However, spin glasses differ from structural glasses for a crucial feature: they enjoy a time reversal symmetry. This symmetry can be broken by applying an external magnetic field, but embarrassingly little is known about the critical behaviour of a spin glass in a field. In this context, the space dimension is crucial. Simulations are easier to interpret in a large number of dimensions, but one must work below the upper critical dimension (i.e., in d<6) in order for results to have relevance for experiments. Here we show conclusive evidence for the presence of a phase transition in a four-dimensional spin glass in a field. Two ingredients were crucial for this achievement: massive numerical simulations were carried out on the Janus special-purpose computer, and a new and powerful finite-size scaling method.

10 pages, 6 figures

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• Spin Glass in a Field: a New Zero-Temperature Fixed Point in Finite Dimensions
• The Gardner transition in finite dimensions
• From local to global ground states in Ising spin glasses
• Testing statics-dynamics equivalence at the spin-glass transition in three dimensions
• Reconfigurable computing for Monte Carlo simulations: results and prospects of the Janus project
• Non-perturbative effects in spin glasses
• Hierarchical spin glasses in a magnetic field: A renormalization-group study
• Low-temperature behavior of the statistics of the overlap distribution in Ising spin-glass models
• Ferromagnetic phase in the polarized two-species bosonic Hubbard Model