Spin glass models with Kac interactions

In this paper I will review my work on disordered systems -spin glass model with two body and $p>2$ body interactions- with long but finite interaction range $R$. I will describe the relation of these model with Mean Field Theory in the Kac limit and some attempts to go beyond mean field.Comment: Proceedings of the Stat-phys23 conferenc

A note on the Guerra and Talagrand theorems for Mean Field Spin Glasses: the simple case of spherical models

The aim of this paper is to discuss the main ideas of the Talagrand proof of the Parisi Ansatz for the free-energy of Mean Field Spin Glasses with a physicist's approach. We consider the case of the spherical $p$-spin model, which has the following advantages: 1) the Parisi Ansatz takes the simple ``one step replica symmetry breaking form'', 2) the replica free-energy as a function of the order parameters is simple enough to allow for numerical maximization with arbitrary precision. We present the essential ideas of the proof, we stress its connections with the theory of effective potentials for glassy systems, and we reduce the technically more difficult part of the Talagrand's analysis to an explicit evaluation of the solution of a variational problem.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures. Added references and minor language correction

Standalone vertex finding in the ATLAS muon spectrometer

A dedicated reconstruction algorithm to find decay vertices in the ATLAS muon spectrometer is presented. The algorithm searches the region just upstream of or inside the muon spectrometer volume for multi-particle vertices that originate from the decay of particles with long decay paths. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated using both a sample of simulated Higgs boson events, in which the Higgs boson decays to long-lived neutral particles that in turn decay to bbar b final states, and pp collision data at √s = 7 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC during 2011

Hiding solutions in random satisfiability problems: A statistical mechanics approach

A major problem in evaluating stochastic local search algorithms for NP-complete problems is the need for a systematic generation of hard test instances having previously known properties of the optimal solutions. On the basis of statistical mechanics results, we propose random generators of hard and satisfiable instances for the 3-satisfiability problem (3SAT). The design of the hardest problem instances is based on the existence of a first order ferromagnetic phase transition and the glassy nature of excited states. The analytical predictions are corroborated by numerical results obtained from complete as well as stochastic local algorithms.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, revised version to app. in PR

Glassy Mean-Field Dynamics of the Backgammon model

In this paper we present an exact study of the relaxation dynamics of the backgammon model. This is a model of a gas of particles in a discrete space which presents glassy phenomena as a result of {\it entropy barriers} in configuration space. The model is simple enough to allow for a complete analytical treatment of the dynamics in infinite dimensions. We first derive a closed equation describing the evolution of the occupation number probabilities, then we generalize the analysis to the study the autocorrelation function. We also consider possible variants of the model which allow to study the effect of energy barriers.Comment: 21 pages, revtex, 4 uuencoded figure

Domain-Wall Free-Energy of Spin Glass Models:Numerical Method and Boundary Conditions

An efficient Monte Carlo method is extended to evaluate directly domain-wall free-energy for randomly frustrated spin systems. Using the method, critical phenomena of spin-glass phase transition is investigated in 4d +/-J Ising model under the replica boundary condition. Our values of the critical temperature and exponent, obtained by finite-size scaling, are in good agreement with those of the standard MC and the series expansion studies. In addition, two exponents, the stiffness exponent and the fractal dimension of the domain wall, which characterize the ordered phase, are obtained. The latter value is larger than d-1, indicating that the domain wall is really rough in the 4d Ising spin glass phase.Comment: 9 pages Latex(Revtex), 8 eps figure

Metastable States in Spin Glasses and Disordered Ferromagnets

We study analytically M-spin-flip stable states in disordered short-ranged Ising models (spin glasses and ferromagnets) in all dimensions and for all M. Our approach is primarily dynamical and is based on the convergence of a zero-temperature dynamical process with flips of lattice animals up to size M and starting from a deep quench, to a metastable limit. The results (rigorous and nonrigorous, in infinite and finite volumes) concern many aspects of metastable states: their numbers, basins of attraction, energy densities, overlaps, remanent magnetizations and relations to thermodynamic states. For example, we show that their overlap distribution is a delta-function at zero. We also define a dynamics for M=infinity, which provides a potential tool for investigating ground state structure.Comment: 34 pages (LaTeX); to appear in Physical Review

Ultrametricity in 3D Edwards-Anderson spin glasses

We perform an accurate test of Ultrametricity in the aging dynamics of the three dimensional Edwards-Anderson spin glass. Our method consists in considering the evolution in parallel of two identical systems constrained to have fixed overlap. This turns out to be a particularly efficient way to study the geometrical relations between configurations at distant large times. Our findings strongly hint towards dynamical ultrametricity in spin glasses, while this is absent in simpler aging systems with domain growth dynamics. A recently developed theory of linear response in glassy systems allows to infer that dynamical ultrametricity implies the same property at the level of equilibrium states.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure