Glassy behavior of two-dimensional stripe-forming systems

TL;DR

This paper investigates the glassy behavior in two-dimensional stripe-forming systems with competing interactions, revealing a glass transition characterized by numerous metastable states and slow dynamics, relevant to materials like high-Tc superconductors and ferromagnetic films.

Contribution

It introduces a replica approach to analyze stripe-forming models, demonstrating a glass transition with non-ergodic behavior in non-disordered systems.

Findings

Existence of a glass transition in 2D stripe systems

Presence of exponentially many metastable states

Identification of slow dynamics and non-equilibrium effects

Abstract

We study two dimensional frustrated but non-disordered systems applying a replica approach to a stripe forming model with competing interactions. The phenomenology of the model is representative of several well known systems, like high-Tc superconductors and ultrathin ferromagnetic films, which have been the subject of intense research. We establish the existence of a glass transition to a non-ergodic regime accompanied by an exponential number of long lived metastable states, responsible for slow dynamics and non-equilibrium effects.