Spin glasses

Recent developments in the theory of spin glasses are discussed. There has been considerable progress, due to Parisi, Sompolinsky, and others, towards understanding the infinite range (mean field) model of Sherrington and Kirkpatrick. Relaxation times diverge in the thermodynamic limit, and this nonergodic behavior is now understood to be the cause of earlier difficulties. There has been less progress in the study of more realistic models with short-range interactions, but numerical studies have shown rather clearly the absence of a finite temperature transition in two dimensions. There is probably no transition ind=3 either, though the evidence is less clearcut, which makes it difficult to understand the sharpness of the freezing observed experimentally. Well below the freezing temperature ESR and torque measurements have been fairly well explained by a theory of Henley, Sompolinsky, and Halperin, in which an important ingredient is anisotropy due to the Dzyloshinsky-Moriya interaction proposed by Fert and Levy.     

Spin glasses and information

After a brief introduction to information theory, we review the close relationship between the theory of spin glasses and information processing, error-correcting codes in particular. An interesting equivalence of the solvability condition of the spin glass problem and the optimal inference condition in information theory is pointed out.     

块体金属玻璃

在2013年2月出版的Physics Today杂志上刊登了耶鲁大学Jan Schroers教授撰写的题为《块体金属玻璃》的文章,重点介绍了块体金属玻璃优异的类似塑料一样的加工变形能力,并且对未来金属玻璃材料的研究和应用进行了展望. 制备一块金属玻璃就像与一个热力学的时钟赛跑一样.当金属液体冷却到熔点TM以下时,这个时钟开始活动.     

金属玻璃的稳定性

玻璃态材料自诞生以来一直受到自身稳定性的困扰。为了保障玻璃的服役安全性,人们一直努力提高玻璃的耐久性和稳定性。玻璃能否经年累月地保持长期稳定？影响其稳定性的物理机制和根源是什么？这些都是非晶态物理领域长期关注的重要难题。根据以往对非晶合金稳定性的研究结果,文章将简单介绍玻璃亚稳性的起源,然后介绍玻璃如何能够保持长期稳定,如何提高玻璃的热力学和动力学稳定性以制备出超稳玻璃,最后介绍影响玻璃稳定性的材料因素,用于指导有效地获得高稳定性玻璃。对玻璃稳定性的认识和理解,既能够保障玻璃材料服役过程中的安全性,又对认识过冷液体和玻璃转变等基本物理问题非常关键。     

Spin glasses models and typical properties

This article presents a critical discussion of some at the recently published theoretical attempts to understand the essential properties of spin glasses. The fundamental difference between phase transition- and cluster-model (with frozen moments) is studied and compared with experiments regarding the critical behaviour of the systems. At present the cluster-model, combined with magnetic freezing mechanism, seems to be more near to the experimental facts, but more experiments near the transition temperature would be very welcome.     

LaGa-based bulk metallic glasses

We report the formation of La Ga-based bulk metallic glasses. Ternary La–Ga–Cu glassy rods of 2–3 mm in diameter can be easily formed in a wide composition range by the conventional copper mold casting method. With minor addition of extra elements such as Co, Ni, Fe, Nb, Y, and Zr, the critical diameter of the full glassy rods of the La–Ga–Cu matrix can be markedly enhanced to at least 5 mm. The characteristics and properties of these new La Ga-based bulk metallic glasses with excellent glass formation ability and low glass transition temperature are model systems for fundamental issues investigation and could have some potential applications in micromachining field.     

Microstructure of fragile metallic glasses inferred from ultrasound-accelerated crystallization in Pd-based metallic glasses

By utilizing ultrasonic annealing at a temperature below (or near) the glass transition temperature Tg, we revealed a microstructural pattern of a partially crystallized Pd-based metallic glass with a high-resolution electron microscopy. On the basis of the observed microstructure, we inferred a plausible microstructural model of fragile metallic glasses composed of strongly bonded regions surrounded by weakly bonded regions (WBRs). The crystallization in WBRs at such a low temperature under the ultrasonic vibrations is caused by accumulation of atomic jumps associated with the beta relaxation being resonant with the ultrasonic strains. This microstructural model successfully illustrates a marked increase of elasticity after crystallization with a small density change and a correlation between the fragility of the liquid and the Poisson ratio of the solid.     

探索塑性金属玻璃

缺乏室温宏观塑性是限制金属玻璃应用,制约金属玻璃形变机理研究的主要障碍,因此探索具有室温宏观塑性的金属玻璃材料成为金属玻璃研究领域的热点.文章首先介绍了作者为提高金属玻璃室温塑性所采用的三种在实践中可行的方法,然后根据金属玻璃的弹性模量(泊松比)与塑性的关系,报道了作者在设计大塑性金属玻璃材料方面的最新进展.     

Magnetism and structure of metallic glasses

Hyperfine Interactions - Metallic glasses are a rather new class of materials. They offer exciting possibilities for finding new materials with combinations of properties unknown for crystalline...     

探索塑性金属玻璃

缺乏室温宏观塑性是限制金属玻璃应用,制约金属玻璃形变机理研究的主要障碍,因此探索具有室温宏观塑性的金属玻璃材料成为金属玻璃研究领域的热点.文章首先介绍了作者为提高金属玻璃室温塑性所采用的三种在实践中可行的方法,然后根据金属玻璃的弹性模量（泊松比）与塑性的关系,报道了作者在设计大塑性金属玻璃材料方面的最新进展.     

Spin glasses with long-range interactions

A spin-glass model with a general form of long-range interactions is introduced. The replica method and the renormalization group theory are used and the results are explained from the viewpoint of frustration effects compared with the non- random case. The so-called mean field approximation is shown to be invalid for 3-d RKKY interaction systems.     

Spin glasses on thin graphs

In a recent paper [C. Baillie, D.A. Johnston and J.-P. Kownacki, Nucl. Phys. B 432 (1994) 551] we found strong evidence from simulations that the Ising antiferromagnet on “thin” random graphs — Feynman diagrams — displayed a mean-field spin-glass transition. The intrinsic interest of considering such random graphs is that they give mean-field theory results without long-range interactions or the drawbacks, arising from boundary problems, of the Bethe lattice. In this paper we reprise the saddle-point calculations for the Ising and Potts ferromagnet, antiferromagnet and spin glass on Feynman diagrams. We use standard results from bifurcation theory that enable us to treat an arbitrary number of replicas and any quenched bond distribution. We note the agreement between the ferromagnetic and spin-glass transition temperatures thus calculated and those derived by analogy with the Bethe lattice or in previous replica calculations.

We then investigate numerically spin glasses with a ±J bond distribution for the Ising and Q = 3, 4, 10, 50 state Potts models, paying particular attention to the independence of the spin-glass transition from the fraction of positive and negative bonds in the Ising case and the qualitative form of the overlap distribution P(q) for all of the models. The parallels with infinite-range spin-glass models in both the analytical calculations and simulations are pointed out.     

Oscillations of echo amplitude in glasses in a magnetic field induced by nuclear dipole-dipole interaction

The influence of a magnetic field on the dipole echo amplitude in glasses (at temperatures of about 10 mK) induced by the dipole-dipole interaction of nuclear spins has been theoretically studied. It has been shown that a change in the mutual position of nuclear spins at tunneling and the Zeeman energy E _H of their interaction with the external magnetic field lead to a nonmonotonic magnetic-field dependence of the dipole echo amplitude. The approximation that the nuclear dipole-dipole interaction energy E _d is much smaller than the Zeeman energy has been found to be valid in the experimentally important cases. It has been shown that the dipole echo amplitude in this approximation may be described by a simple universal analytic function independent of the microscopic structure of the two-level systems. An excellent agreement of the theory with the experimental data has been obtained without fitting parameters (except for the unknown echo amplitude).     

Mössbauer study of surface crystallization in metallic glasses

Mössbauer spectroscopy has been used to study the kinetics of surface crystallization in amorphous Fe₄₀Ni₄₀B₂₀. The activation energy for the surface crystallization is found to be about 230 kJ/mol, which is much lower than that for the bulk crystallization. Change in the surface composition due to aging can be a possible cause of this reduced surface stability.     

Mössbauer study of structural defects in metallic glasses

Radiation damage produced in amorphous Fe₇₈Si₇B₁₁Cz by thermal neutron irradiation has been studied with an aim to get information about defects and other structural changes occuring in the system. Neutron irradiation results in surface crystallization of the specimen via radiation enhanced diffusion. Mössbauer studies give evidence against the formation of point-like defects on irradiation.     

On-line nuclear orientation study of184Au

The¹⁸⁴Au→¹⁸⁴Pt decay, studied on-line with the UNISOR facility at HHIRF, is discussed. Gamma-ray and conversion-electron spectroscopy of¹⁸⁴Pt as well as on-line nuclear orientation measurements of¹⁸⁴Au were done. A new low-lying level scheme of¹⁸⁴Pt is proposed. Two coexisting bands with different deformations and their respective γ-vibrational bands are established. Internal conversion coefficients for interband transitions between states with the same spin are extracted from the spectroscopy measurements. The relative E0 contents of the transitions are determined by combining internal conversion coefficients with E2/M1 mixing ratios deduced from gamma-ray anisotropies measured from oriented nuclei.