What makes a phase transition? Analysis of the random satisfiability problem

In the last 30 years it was found that many combinatorial systems undergo phase transitions. One of the most important examples of these can be found among the random k-satisfiability problems (often referred to as k-SAT), asking whether there exists an assignment of Boolean values satisfying a Boolean formula composed of clauses with k random variables each. The random 3-SAT problem is reported to show various phase transitions at different critical values of the ratio of the number of clauses to the number of variables. The most famous of these occurs when the probability of finding a satisfiable instance suddenly drops from 1 to 0. This transition is associated with a rise in the hardness of the problem, but until now the correlation between any of the proposed phase transitions and the hardness is not totally clear. In this paper we will first show numerically that the number of solutions universally follows a lognormal distribution, thereby explaining the puzzling question of why the number of solutions is still exponential at the critical point. Moreover we provide evidence that the hardness of the closely related problem of counting the total number of solutions does not show any phase transition-like behavior. This raises the question of whether the probability of finding a satisfiable instance is really an order parameter of a phase transition or whether it is more likely to just show a simple sharp threshold phenomenon. More generally, this paper aims at starting a discussion where a simple sharp threshold phenomenon turns into a genuine phase transition

The spherical 2+p spin glass model: an analytically solvable model with a glass-to-glass transition

We present the detailed analysis of the spherical s+p spin glass model with two competing interactions: among p spins and among s spins. The most interesting case is the 2+p model with p > 3 for which a very rich phase diagram occurs, including, next to the paramagnetic and the glassy phase represented by the one step replica symmetry breaking ansatz typical of the spherical p-spin model, other two amorphous phases. Transitions between two contiguous phases can also be of different kind. The model can thus serve as mean-field representation of amorphous-amorphous transitions (or transitions between undercooled liquids of different structure). The model is analytically solvable everywhere in the phase space, even in the limit where the infinite replica symmetry breaking ansatz is required to yield a thermodynamically stable phase.Comment: 21 pages, 18 figure