Exotic phase transitions in complex systems

by Ian A. Campbell (Laboratoire Charles Coulomb, Université Montpellier II)

Wednesday 15 Jun 2011, 11:00 → 12:00 Europe/Stockholm

122:026

Spin glasses are convenient complex systems for experimental or numerical studies, but even forty years after their initial discovery they are far from being fully understood. What can spin glasses hope to tell us about the freezing transition in the vast family of glassy systems? Non-exponential dynamics in the paramagnetic region can be interpreted in terms of a configuration space percolation transition, entirely distinct from a conventional second order transition. Theory and simulation have concentrated on Ising spin glasses, even though the great majority of laboratory spin glasses are Heisenberg. It turns out that both experiment and numerics show that chirality plays an essential role at the ordering transition of Heisenberg spin glasses.