Replica trick with real replicas: A way to build in thermodynamic homogeneity

We discuss the mean-field theory of spin-glass models with frustrated long-range random spin exchange. We analyze the reasons for breakdown of the simple mean-field theory of Sherrington and Kirkpatrick. We relate the replica-symmetry breaking to ergodicity breaking and use the concept of real replicas to restore thermodynamic homogeneity of the equilibrium free energy in a replicated phase space. Embedded replications of the spin variables result in a set of hierarchical fre...

These are notes from the lectures of Giorgio Parisi given at the autumn school "Statistical Physics, Optimization, Inference, and Message-Passing Algorithm", that took place in Les Houches, France from Monday September 30th, 2013, till Friday October 11th, 2013. The school was organized by Florent Krzakala from UPMC and ENS Paris, Federico Ricci-Tersenghi from "La Sapienza" Roma, Lenka Zdeborov\'a from CEA Saclay and CNRS, and Riccardo Zecchina from Politecnico Torino. The fi...

We investigate the connection between the well known Sherrington-Kirkpatrick Ising Spin Glass and the corresponding Lattice Gas model by analyzing the relation between their thermodynamical functions. We present results of replica approach in the Replica Symmetric approximation and discuss its stability as a function of temperature and external source. Next we examine the effects of first order Replica Symmetry Breaking at zero temperature. We finally compare SK results with ...

A review of the replica symmetric solution of the classical and quantum, infinite-range, Sherrington-Kirkpatrick spin glass is presented.

By using a simple interpolation argument, in previous work we have proven the existence of the thermodynamic limit, for mean field disordered models, including the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model, and the Derrida p-spin model. Here we extend this argument in order to compare the limiting free energy with the expression given by the Parisi Ansatz, and including full spontaneous replica symmetry breaking. Our main result is that the quenched average of the free energy is bounded ...

We use real replicas within the Thouless, Anderson and Palmer construction to investigate stability of solutions with respect to uniform scalings in the phase space of the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model. We show that the demand of homogeneity of thermodynamic potentials leads in a natural way to a thermodynamically dependent ultrametric hierarchy of order parameters. The derived hierarchical mean-field equations appear equivalent to the discrete Parisi RSB scheme. The number o...

We analyze the replica-symmetry-breaking construction in the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model of a spin glass. We present a general scheme for deriving an exact asymptotic behavior near the critical temperature of the solution with an arbitrary number of discrete hierarchies of the broken replica symmetry. We show that all solutions with finite-many hierarchies are unstable and only the scheme with infinite-many hierarchies becomes marginally stable. We show how the solutions fr...

The interpolation techniques have become, in the past decades, a powerful approach to lighten several properties of spin glasses within a simple mathematical framework. Intrinsically, for their construction, these schemes were naturally implemented into the cavity field technique, or its variants as the stochastic stability or the random overlap structures. However the first and most famous approach to mean field statistical mechanics with quenched disorder is the replica tri...

The full mean-field solution of spin glass models with a continuous order-parameter function is not directly available and approximate schemes must be used to assess its properties. The averaged physical quantities are to be represented via the replica trick and the limit to zero number of replicas is to be performed for each of them. To avoid this we introduce a perturbation expansion for a mean-field free-energy functional with a continuous order-parameter function without ...

We study the problem of chaos in temperature in some mean-field spin-glass models by means of a replica computation over a model of coupled systems. We propose a set of solutions of the saddle point equations which are intrinsically non-chaotic and solve a general problem regarding the consistency of their structure. These solutions are relevant in the case of uncoupled systems too, therefore they imply a non-trivial overlap distribution $P(q_{T1T2})$ between systems at diffe...