Thermocycling experiments with the three-dimensional Ising spin glass model

A characteristic feature of the non--equilibrium dynamics of real spin glasses at low temperatures are strong aging effects. These phenomena can be manipulated by changing the external parameters in various ways: a thermo-cycling experiment consists for instance of a short heat pulse during the waiting time, by which the relaxation might be strongly affected. Results of numerical experiments of this kind, performed via Monte Carlo simulations of the three dimensional Ising spin glass model, are presented. The theoretical implications are discussed and the scenario found is compared with the experimental situation.Comment: LaTeX 13 pages (+6 figures upon request), THP11-9

Universal properties of shortest paths in isotropically correlated random potentials

We consider the optimal paths in a $d$-dimensional lattice, where the bonds have isotropically correlated random weights. These paths can be interpreted as the ground state configuration of a simplified polymer model in a random potential. We study how the universal scaling exponents, the roughness and the energy fluctuation exponent, depend on the strength of the disorder correlations. Our numerical results using Dijkstra's algorithm to determine the optimal path in directed as well as undirected lattices indicate that the correlations become relevant if they decay with distance slower than 1/r in d=2 and 3. We show that the exponent relation 2nu-omega=1 holds at least in d=2 even in case of correlations. Both in two and three dimensions, overhangs turn out to be irrelevant even in the presence of strong disorder correlations.Comment: 8 pages LaTeX, eps figures included, typos added, references added, content change

Strong Randomness Fixed Point in the Dissipative Random Transverse Field Ising Model

The interplay between disorder, quantum fluctuations and dissipation is studied in the random transverse Ising chain coupled to a dissipative Ohmic bath with a real space renormalization group. A typically very large length scale, L*, is identified above which the physics of frozen clusters dominates. Below L* a strong disorder fixed point determines scaling at a pseudo-critical point. In a Griffiths-McCoy region frozen clusters produce already a finite magnetization resulting in a classical low temperature behavior of the susceptibility and specific heat. These override the confluent singularities that are characterized by a continuously varying exponent z and are visible above a temperature T* ~ L*^{-z}.Comment: 4 pages RevTeX, figures include

Random and aperiodic quantum spin chains: A comparative study

According to the Harris-Luck criterion the relevance of a fluctuating interaction at the critical point is connected to the value of the fluctuation exponent omega. Here we consider different types of relevant fluctuations in the quantum Ising chain and investigate the universality class of the models. At the critical point the random and aperiodic systems behave similarly, due to the same type of extreme broad distribution of the energy scales at low energies. The critical exponents of some averaged quantities are found to be a universal function of omega, but some others do depend on other parameters of the distribution of the couplings. In the off-critical region there is an important difference between the two systems: there are no Griffiths singularities in aperiodic models.Comment: 4 pages RevTeX, 2 eps-figures include