Replica-symmetric solutions of a dilute Ising ferromagnet in a random field

We use the replica method in order to obtain an expression for the variational free energy of an Ising ferromagnet on a Viana-Bray lattice in the presence of random external fields. Introducing a global order parameter, in the replica-symmetric context, the problem is reduced to the analysis of the solutions of a nonlinear integral equation. At zero temperature, and under some restrictions on the form of the random fields, we are able to perform a detailed analysis of stability of the replica-symmetric solutions. In contrast to the behaviour of the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model for a spin glass in a uniform field, the paramagnetic solution is fully stable in a sufficiently large random field

Compressible Sherrington-Kirkpatrick spin-glass model

We introduce a Sherrington-Kirkpatrick spin-glass model with the addition of elastic degrees of freedom. The problem is formulated in terms of an effective four-spin Hamiltonian in the pressure ensemble, which can be treated by the replica method. In the replica-symmetric approximation, we analyze the pressure-temperature phase diagram, and obtain expressions for the critical boundaries between the disordered and the ordered (spin-glass and ferromagnetic) phases. The second-order para-ferromagnetic border ends at a tricritical point, beyond which the transition becomes discontinuous. We use these results to make contact with the temperature-concentration phase diagrams of mixtures of hydrogen-bonded crystals.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures; added references, added conten

Spin-glass behaviour on random lattices

The ground-state phase diagram of an Ising spin-glass model on a random graph with an arbitrary fraction $w$ of ferromagnetic interactions is analysed in the presence of an external field. Using the replica method, and performing an analysis of stability of the replica-symmetric solution, it is shown that $w=1/2$, correponding to an unbiased spin glass, is a singular point in the phase diagram, separating a region with a spin-glass phase ($w<1/2$) from a region with spin-glass, ferromagnetic, mixed, and paramagnetic phases ($w>1/2$)

QuaSI: Quantile Sparse Image Prior for Spatio-Temporal Denoising of Retinal OCT Data

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) enables high-resolution and non-invasive 3D imaging of the human retina but is inherently impaired by speckle noise. This paper introduces a spatio-temporal denoising algorithm for OCT data on a B-scan level using a novel quantile sparse image (QuaSI) prior. To remove speckle noise while preserving image structures of diagnostic relevance, we implement our QuaSI prior via median filter regularization coupled with a Huber data fidelity model in a variational approach. For efficient energy minimization, we develop an alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) scheme using a linearization of median filtering. Our spatio-temporal method can handle both, denoising of single B-scans and temporally consecutive B-scans, to gain volumetric OCT data with enhanced signal-to-noise ratio. Our algorithm based on 4 B-scans only achieved comparable performance to averaging 13 B-scans and outperformed other current denoising methods.Comment: submitted to MICCAI'1

Spontaneous Symmetry Breakdown in non-relativistic Quantum Mechanics

The advantages and disadvantages of some pedagogical non-relativistic quantum-mechanical models, used to illustrate spontaneous symmetry breakdown, are discussed. A simple quantum-mechanical toy model (a spinor on the line, subject to a magnetostatic interaction) is presented, that exhibits the spontaneous breakdown of an internal symmetry.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1111.1213. Equations (30) and (31) have been corrected. Other minor correction