The Phase Transitions in a $p$ spin Glass Model: A Numerical Study

TL;DR

This study uses large-scale Monte Carlo simulations to explore the nature of the glass transition in a $p$-spin glass model, challenging mean-field predictions and suggesting the absence of a 1RSB phase transition.

Contribution

It provides numerical evidence that the transition is a full RSB phase without a 1RSB transition, contrary to some theoretical expectations.

Findings

Critical temperatures match theoretical predictions for certain $\sigma$ values.

No numerical evidence for a 1RSB phase transition was found.

Results suggest the absence of phase transitions in three-dimensional analogs.

Abstract

We investigate the balanced $M=4$, $p=4$ spin-glass model for a one-dimensional long-range proxy for the finite dimensional short-range $p$-spin glass model to examine the nature of the glass transition beyond mean-field theory. We perform large-scale Monte Carlo equilibrated simulations for both fully connected and power-law diluted versions of the model. The critical temperatures extracted from the finite-size scaling (FSS) analysis of spin-glass susceptibility are in good agreement with theoretical predictions for $\sigma = 0, 0.25$, and 0.55. For these values of the long-range exponent $\sigma$ (which is the power of the decrease of the interactions between the spins with their separation), one might have expected that mean-field theory would provide a good description of the system. However, the spin-overlap distribution and the value of the $\lambda$-parameter do not provide numerical evidence for a one-step replica symmetry breaking (1RSB) phase transition. Instead, our results indicate a direct transition from the paramagnetic state to a full replica symmetry broken phase, with a renormalized value of $\lambda\equiv \omega_2/\omega_1 < 1$ suggesting a continuous FRSB transition, despite this ratio being equal to 2 at mean-field level. A value of $\lambda > 1$ is required for the discontinuous 1RSB transition. We argue that strong finite-size effects and closely spaced transition temperatures remove the expected 1RSB transition for the system sizes which we can study. For values of the exponent $\sigma = 0.85$, which roughly corresponds to a three dimensional system, we find that the renormalized value of $\lambda$ is again less than 1, with no signs of either the 1RSB transition or the continuous FRSB transition, suggesting that the Kauzmann temperature $T_K$ in three dimensions might be zero and the complete absence of phase transitions in structural glasses.