Exact form of the exponential correlation function in the glassy super-rough phase

TL;DR

This paper derives the exact form of the exponential correlation function in the super-rough glass phase of the 2D random-phase sine-Gordon model, revealing detailed behavior of correlations near the glass transition.

Contribution

It provides the first analytical calculation of higher cumulants and the exact exponential correlation function in the super-rough phase, including the dependence on wavevector q.

Findings

Correlation function decays faster at q=1, affecting Bragg scattering.

Higher cumulants grow logarithmically with distance, indicating strong disorder effects.

Derived explicit formulas for the decay exponents and anomalous behavior near the transition.

Abstract

We consider the random-phase sine-Gordon model in two dimensions. It describes two-dimensional elastic systems with random periodic disorder, such as pinned flux-line arrays, random field XY models, and surfaces of disordered crystals. The model exhibits a super-rough glass phase at low temperature $T<T_{c}$ with relative displacements growing with distance $r$ as $\bar{\langle [\theta(r)-\theta(0)]^2\rangle} \simeq A(\tau) \ln^2 (r/a)$, where $A(\tau) = 2 \tau^2- 2 \tau^3 +\mathcal{O}(\tau^4)$ near the transition and $\tau=1-T/T_{c}$. We calculate all higher cumulants and show that they grow as $\bar{\langle[\theta(r)-\theta(0)]^{2n}\rangle}_c \simeq [2 (-1)^{n+1} (2n)! \zeta(2n-1) \tau^2 + \mathcal{O}(\tau^3) ] \ln(r/a)$, $n \geq 2$, where $\zeta$ is the Riemann zeta function. By summation, we obtain the decay of the exponential correlation function as $\bar{\langle e^{iq\left[\theta(r)-\theta(0)\right]}\rangle} \simeq (a/r)^{\eta(q)} \exp\boldsymbol(-\frac{1}{2}\mathcal{A}(q)\ln^2(r/a)\boldsymbol)$ where $\eta(q)$ and ${\cal A}(q)$ are obtained for arbitrary $q \leq 1$ to leading order in $\tau$. The anomalous exponent is $\eta(q) = c q^2 - \tau^2 q^2 [2\gamma_E+\psi(q)+\psi(-q)]$ in terms of the digamma function $\psi$, where $c$ is non-universal and $\gamma_E$ is the Euler constant. The correlation function shows a faster decay at $q=1$, corresponding to fermion operators in the dual picture, which should be visible in Bragg scattering experiments.