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

References in corpus (7)

• Supercooled Liquids for Pedestrians
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• Nonequilibrium spin glass dynamics from picoseconds to 0.1 seconds
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• Universality and universal finite-size scaling functions in four-dimensional Ising spin glasses
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• The three dimensional Ising spin glass in an external magnetic field: the role of the silent majority
• Spin Glass in a Field: a New Zero-Temperature Fixed Point in Finite Dimensions
• The Gardner transition in finite dimensions
• Testing statics-dynamics equivalence at the spin-glass transition in three dimensions
• From local to global ground states in Ising spin glasses
• Reconfigurable computing for Monte Carlo simulations: results and prospects of the Janus project
• Unexpected upper critical dimension for spin glass models in a field predicted by the loop expansion around the Bethe solution at zero temperature
• Non-perturbative effects in spin glasses
• The droplet-scaling versus replica symmetry breaking debate in spin glasses revisited
• Spin-glass dynamics in the presence of a magnetic field: exploration of microscopic properties
• Low-temperature behavior of the statistics of the overlap distribution in Ising spin-glass models
• Hierarchical spin glasses in a magnetic field: A renormalization-group study
• Numerical test of the replica-symmetric Hamiltonian for the correlations of the critical state of spin glasses in a field
• Spin-glass dynamics: experiment, theory and simulation
• Small field chaos in spin glasses: universal predictions from the ultrametric tree and comparison with numerical simulations
• Spin glasses in a field show a phase transition varying the distance among real replicas (and how to exploit it to find the critical line in a field)
• Nontrivial maturation metastate-average state in a one-dimensional long-range Ising spin glass: above and below the upper critical range
• Evidence of a second-order phase transition in the six-dimensional Ising spin glass in a field
• Critical exponents of the spin glass transition in a field at zero temperature
• Ferromagnetic phase in the polarized two-species bosonic Hubbard Model
• Evidence of de Almeida-Thouless line below six dimensions
• Long-range spin glass in a field at zero temperature