Large Deviations of the Free-Energy in Diluted Mean-Field Spin-Glass

TL;DR

This paper investigates the nature of free-energy fluctuations in diluted mean-field spin-glass models, revealing that local heterogeneity leads to Gaussian fluctuations, while homogeneity results in non-Gaussian behavior similar to the SK model.

Contribution

The study analytically demonstrates how local interaction heterogeneity determines whether free-energy fluctuations are Gaussian or non-Gaussian in diluted spin-glass models.

Findings

Gaussian fluctuations occur with local non-homogeneity.

Non-Gaussian fluctuations appear in locally homogeneous lattices.

Connection established between field population fluctuations and free-energy behavior.

Abstract

Sample-to-sample free energy fluctuations in spin-glasses display a markedly different behaviour in finite-dimensional and fully-connected models, namely Gaussian vs. non-Gaussian. Spin-glass models defined on various types of random graphs are in an intermediate situation between these two classes of models and we investigate whether the nature of their free-energy fluctuations is Gaussian or not. It has been argued that Gaussian behaviour is present whenever the interactions are locally non-homogeneous, i.e. in most cases with the notable exception of models with fixed connectivity and random couplings $J_{ij}=\pm \tilde{J}$. We confirm these expectation by means of various analytical results. In particular we unveil the connection between the spatial fluctuations of the populations of populations of fields defined at different sites of the lattice and the Gaussian nature of the free-energy fluctuations. On the contrary on locally homogeneous lattices the populations do not fluctuate over the sites and as a consequence the small-deviations of the free energy are non-Gaussian and scales as in the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model.