Thermodynamics and Universality for Mean Field Quantum Spin Glasses

We study aspects of the thermodynamics of quantum versions of spin glasses. By means of the Lie-Trotter formula for exponential sums of operators, we adapt methods used to analyze classical spin glass models to answer analogous questions about quantum models.     

Limiting Dynamics for Spherical Models of Spin Glasses at High Temperature

We analyze the coupled non-linear integro-differential equations whose solution is the thermodynamical limit of the empirical correlation and response functions in the Langevin dynamics for spherical p-spin disordered mean-field models. We provide a mathematically rigorous derivation of their FDT solution (for the high temperature regime) and of certain key properties of this solution, which are in agreement with earlier derivations based on physical grounds. AMS (2000) Subject Classification: Primary: 82C44 Secondary: 82C31, 60H10, 60F15, 60K35     

Limiting Dynamics for Spherical Models of Spin Glasses at High Temperature

We analyze the coupled non-linear integro-differential equations whose solution is the thermodynamical limit of the empirical correlation and response functions in the Langevin dynamics for spherical p−spin disordered mean-field models. We provide a mathematically rigorous derivation of their FDT solution (for the high temperature regime) and of certain key properties of this solution, which are in agreement with earlier derivations based on physical grounds. AMS (2000) Subject Classification: Primary: 82C44, Secondery: 82C31, 60H10, 60F15, 60K35     

Some Observations for Mean-Field Spin Glass Models

We obtain bounds to show that the pressure of a two-body, mean-field spin glass is a Lipschitz function of the underlying distribution of the random coupling constants, with respect to a particular semi-norm. This allows us to re-derive a result of Carmona and Hu, on the universality of the SK model, by a different proof, and to generalize this result to the Viana–Bray model. We also prove another bound, suitable when the coupling constants are not independent, which is what is necessary if one wants to consider “canonical” instead of “grand canonical” versions of the SK and Viana–Bray models. Finally, we review Viana–Bray type models, using the language of Lévy processes, which is natural in this context.      

Glauber Dynamics for the Mean-Field Potts Model

We study Glauber dynamics for the mean-field (Curie-Weiss) Potts model with q??3 states and show that it undergoes a critical slowdown at an inverse-temperature ?? _s (q) strictly lower than the critical ?? _c (q) for uniqueness of the thermodynamic limit. The dynamical critical ?? _s (q) is the spinodal point marking the onset of metastability. We prove that when ??<?? _s (q) the mixing time is asymptotically C(??,q)nlogn and the dynamics exhibits the cutoff phenomena, a sharp transition in mixing, with a window of order n. At ??=?? _s (q) the dynamics no longer exhibits cutoff and its mixing obeys a power-law of order n ^4/3. For ??>?? _s (q) the mixing time is exponentially large in n. Furthermore, as ?????? _s with n, the mixing time interpolates smoothly from subcritical to critical behavior, with the latter reached at a scaling window of O(n ^?2/3) around ?? _s . These results form the first complete analysis of mixing around the critical dynamical temperature??including the critical power law??for a model with a first order phase transition.     

Convergence to Equilibrium for Spin Glasses

We derive estimates on the thermalisation times for dynamical spin glasses at high temperature. Received: 4 November 1999 / Accepted: 15 May 2000     

An In-Depth View of the Microscopic Dynamics of Ising Spin Glasses at Fixed Temperature

Using the special-purpose computer Janus, we follow the nonequilibrium dynamics of the Ising spin glass in three dimensions for eleven orders of magnitude. The use of integral estimators for the coherence and correlation lengths allows us to study dynamic heterogeneities and the presence of a replicon mode and to obtain safe bounds on the Edwards-Anderson order parameter below the critical temperature. We obtain good agreement with experimental determinations of the temperature-dependent decay exponents for the thermoremanent magnetization. This magnitude is observed to scale with the much harder to measure coherence length, a potentially useful result for experimentalists. The exponents for energy relaxation display a linear dependence on temperature and reasonable extrapolations to the critical point. We conclude examining the time growth of the coherence length, with a comparison of critical and activated dynamics.     

The Mean-Field Limit for a Regularized Vlasov-Maxwell Dynamics

The present work establishes the mean-field limit of a N-particle system towards a regularized variant of the relativistic Vlasov-Maxwell system, following the work of Braun-Hepp [Commun Math Phys 56:101–113, 1977] and Dobrushin [Func Anal Appl 13:115–123, 1979] for the Vlasov-Poisson system. The main ingredients in the analysis of this system are (a) a kinetic formulation of the Maxwell equations in terms of a distribution of electromagnetic potential in the momentum variable, (b) a regularization procedure for which an analogue of the total energy—i.e. the kinetic energy of the particles plus the energy of the electromagnetic field—is conserved and (c) an analogue of Dobrushin’s stability estimate for the Monge-Kantorovich-Rubinstein distance between two solutions of the regularized Vlasov-Poisson dynamics adapted to retarded potentials.     

Interaction-Flip Identities in Spin Glasses

We study the properties of fluctuation for the free energies and internal energies of two spin glass systems that differ for having some set of interactions flipped. We show that their difference has a variance that grows like the volume of the flipped region. Using a new interpolation method, which extends to the entire circle the standard interpolation technique, we show by integration by parts that the bound imply new overlap identities for the equilibrium state. As a side result the case of the non-interacting random field is analyzed and the triviality of its overlap distribution proved.     

Duality in Finite-Dimensional Spin Glasses

We present an analysis leading to a conjecture on the exact location of the multicritical point in the phase diagram of spin glasses in finite dimensions. The conjecture, in satisfactory agreement with a number of numerical results, was previously derived using an ansatz emerging from duality and the replica method. In the present paper we carefully examine the ansatz and reduce it to a hypothesis on analyticity of a function appearing in the duality relation. Thus the problem is now clearer than before from a mathematical point of view: The ansatz, somewhat arbitrarily introduced previously, has now been shown to be closely related to the analyticity of a well-defined function.     

The Mixing Time Evolution of Glauber Dynamics for the Mean-Field Ising Model

We consider Glauber dynamics for the Ising model on the complete graph on n vertices, known as the Curie-Weiss model. It is well-known that the mixing-time in the high temperature regime (β < 1) has order n log n, whereas the mixing-time in the case β > 1 is exponential in n. Recently, Levin, Luczak and Peres proved that for any fixed β < 1 there is cutoff at time with a window of order n, whereas the mixing-time at the critical temperature β = 1 is Θ(n ^3/2). It is natural to ask how the mixing-time transitions from Θ(n log n) to Θ(n ^3/2) and finally to exp (Θ(n)). That is, how does the mixing-time behave when β = β(n) is allowed to tend to 1 as n → ∞. In this work, we obtain a complete characterization of the mixing-time of the dynamics as a function of the temperature, as it approaches its critical point β _c  = 1. In particular, we find a scaling window of order around the critical temperature. In the high temperature regime, β = 1 − δ for some 0 < δ < 1 so that δ ² n → ∞ with n, the mixing-time has order (n/δ) log(δ ² n), and exhibits cutoff with constant and window size n/δ. In the critical window, β = 1± δ, where δ ² n is O(1), there is no cutoff, and the mixing-time has order n ^3/2. At low temperature, β = 1 + δ for δ > 0 with δ ² n → ∞ and δ = o(1), there is no cutoff, and the mixing time has order . Research of J. Ding and Y. Peres was supported in part by NSF grant DMS-0605166.     

The Hydrodynamic Limit for Local Mean-Field Dynamics with Unbounded Spins

We consider the dynamics of a class of spin systems with unbounded spins interacting with local mean-field interactions. We prove convergence of the empirical measure to the solution of a McKean–Vlasov equation in the hydrodynamic limit and propagation of chaos. This extends earlier results of Gärtner, Comets and others for bounded spins or strict mean-field interactions.     

Uniqueness of Ground States for Short-Range Spin Glasses in the Half-Plane

We consider the Edwards-Anderson Ising spin glass model on the half-plane \mathbbZ ×\mathbbZ⁺{\mathbb{Z} \times \mathbb{Z}^+} with zero external field and a wide range of choices, including mean zero Gaussian for the common distribution of the collection J of i.i.d. nearest neighbor couplings. The infinite-volume joint distribution K(J,a){\mathcal{K}(J,\alpha)} of couplings J and ground state pairs α with periodic (respectively, free) boundary conditions in the horizontal (respectively, vertical) coordinate is shown to exist without need for subsequence limits. Our main result is that for almost every J, the conditional distribution K(a | J){\mathcal{K}(\alpha\,|\,J)} is supported on a single ground state pair.     

Local Energy Statistics in Spin Glasses

Recently, Bauke and Mertens conjectured that the local statistics of energies in random spin systems with discrete spin space should in most circumstances be the same as in the random energy model. We review some rigorous results confirming the validity of this conjecture. In the context of the SK models, we analyse the limits of the validity of the conjecture for energy levels growing with the volume of the system. In the case of the Generalised Random energy model, we give a complete analysis for the behaviour of the local energy statistics at all energy scales. In particular, we show that, in this case, the REM conjecture holds exactly up to energies E _N < β _c N, where β _c is the critical temperature. We also explain the more complex behaviour that sets in at higher energies. Research supported in part by the DFG in the Dutch-German Bilateral Research Group “Mathematics of Random Spatial Models from Physics and Biology” and by the European Science Foundation in the Programme RDSES.     

A Unified Stability Property in Spin Glasses

Gibbs’ measures in the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick type models satisfy two asymptotic stability properties, the Aizenman-Contucci stochastic stability and the Ghirlanda-Guerra identities, which play a fundamental role in our current understanding of these models. In this paper we show that one can combine these two properties very naturally into one unified stability property.     

Short-Range Spin Glasses and Random Overlap Structures

Properties of Random Overlap Structures (ROSt)’s constructed from the Edwards-Anderson (EA) Spin Glass model on ℤ ^d with periodic boundary conditions are studied. ROSt’s are ℕ×ℕ random matrices whose entries are the overlaps of spin configurations sampled from the Gibbs measure. Since the ROSt construction is the same for mean-field models (like the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model) as for short-range ones (like the EA model), the setup is a good common ground to study the effect of dimensionality on the properties of the Gibbs measure. In this spirit, it is shown, using translation invariance, that the ROSt of the EA model possesses a local stability that is stronger than stochastic stability, a property known to hold at almost all temperatures in many spin glass models with Gaussian couplings. This fact is used to prove stochastic stability for the EA spin glass at all temperatures and for a wide range of coupling distributions. On the way, a theorem of Newman and Stein about the pure state decomposition of the EA model is recovered and extended.     

Mean-Field Dynamics: Singular Potentials and Rate of Convergence

We consider the time evolution of a system of N identical bosons whose interaction potential is rescaled by N ⁻¹. We choose the initial wave function to describe a condensate in which all particles are in the same one-particle state. It is well known that in the mean-field limit N → ∞ the quantum N-body dynamics is governed by the nonlinear Hartree equation. Using a nonperturbative method, we extend previous results on the mean-field limit in two directions. First, we allow a large class of singular interaction potentials as well as strong, possibly time-dependent external potentials. Second, we derive bounds on the rate of convergence of the quantum N-body dynamics to the Hartree dynamics.