Stationarization and Multithermalization in spin glasses

TL;DR

This paper explores how spin glasses in contact with multiple baths at different temperatures can reach a generalized equilibrium, enabling thermodynamic analysis and practical measurement of out-of-equilibrium distributions.

Contribution

It introduces a framework for analyzing spin glasses with multithermal baths, generalizing Boltzmann-Gibbs distributions and connecting to Guerra's bound, with practical implementation insights.

Findings

Generalized stationary distribution for multibath systems.

Implementation of Guerra's bound in a dynamical setting.

Method to infer out-of-equilibrium distributions experimentally.

Abstract

We develop further the study of a system in contact with a multibath having different temperatures at widely separated timescales. We consider those systems that do not thermalize in finite times when in contact with an ordinary bath but may do so in contact with a multibath. Thermodynamic integration is possible, thus allowing one to recover the stationary distribution on the basis of measurements performed in a `multi-reversible' transformation. We show that following such a protocol the system is at each step described by a generalization of the Boltzmann-Gibbs distribution, that has been studied in the past. Guerra's bound interpolation scheme for spin-glasses is closely related to this: by translating it into a dynamical setting, we show how it may actually be implemented in practice. The phase diagram plane of temperature vs "number of replicas", long studied in spin-glasses, in our approach becomes simply that of the two temperatures the system is in contact with. We suggest that this representation may be used to directly compare phenomenological and mean-field inspired models.Finally, we show how an approximate out of equilibrium probability distribution may be inferred experimentally on the basis of measurements along an almost reversible transformation.