Specific heat of the quantum Bragg Glass

TL;DR

This paper investigates the low-temperature specific heat of a quantum Bragg glass, revealing a T^3 dependence in 2D and 3D, with the prefactor influenced by pinning length, using a replica variational approach.

Contribution

It introduces a novel calculation of the specific heat in the quantum Bragg glass phase, highlighting the T^3 behavior and the role of marginality conditions.

Findings

Specific heat scales as T^3 at low temperatures in 2D and 3D.

The prefactor depends on the pinning length.

Linear term in specific heat cancels due to marginality condition.

Abstract

We study the thermodynamics of the vibrational modes of a lattice pinned by impurity disorder in the absence of topological defects (Bragg glass phase). Using a replica variational method we compute the specific heat $C_v$ in the quantum regime and find $C_v \propto T^3$ at low temperatures in dimension three and two. The prefactor is controlled by the pinning length. The non trivial cancellation of the linear term in $C_v$ arises from the so-called marginality condition and has important consequences for other mean field models.