On the nature of the low-temperature phase in discontinuous mean-field spin glasses

The low-temperature phase of discontinuous mean-field spin glasses is generally described by a one-step replica symmetry breaking (1RSB) ansatz. The Gardner transition, i.e. a very-low-temperature phase transition to a full replica symmetry breaking (FRSB) phase, is often regarded as an inessential, and somehow exotic phenomenon. In this paper we show that the metastable states which are relevant for the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of such systems are always in a FRSB phase. The only exceptions are (to the best of our knowledge) the p-spin spherical model and the random energy model (REM). We also discuss the consequences of our results for aging dynamics and for local search algorithms in hard combinatorial problems. Received 10 February 2003 Published online 20 June 2003 RID="a" ID="a"e-mail: Federico.Ricci@roma1.infn.it RID="b" ID="b"UMR 8549, Unité Mixte de Recherche du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique et de l' école Normale Supérieure