Relaxors, spin-, Stoner- and cluster-glasses

TL;DR

This paper proposes that relaxor ferroelectrics can be understood as soft-pseudospin analogues of spin glasses, offering new insights into their complex behavior and suggesting directions for future research.

Contribution

It introduces a conceptual framework linking relaxor ferroelectrics to spin glass models, extending the analogy to itinerant magnet systems and exploring heterovalent systems.

Findings

Relaxor ferroelectrics resemble soft-pseudospin spin glasses.

The analogy helps explain characteristic features of relaxors.

Suggestions for experimental and theoretical future studies.

Abstract

It is argued that the main characteristic features of displacive relaxor ferrolectrics of the form ${\rm{A(B,B')}\rm{O}}_3$ with isovalent ${\rm{B,B'}}$ can be explained and understood in terms of a soft-pseudospin analogue of conventional spin glasses as extended to itinerant magnet systems. The emphasis is on conceptual comprehension and on stimulating new perspectives with respect to previous and future studies. Some suggestions are made for further studies both on actual real systems and on test model systems to probe further. The case of heterovalent systems is also considered briefly.