Phase coexistence and relaxation of the spherical frustrated Blume-Emery-Griffiths model with attractive particles coupling

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the equilibrium and dynamical behavior of a spherical frustrated Blume-Emery-Griffiths model with attractive interactions, revealing complex phase transitions including a tricritical point and phase coexistence.

Contribution

It introduces a spherical version of the frustrated BEG model with attractive coupling and characterizes its phase diagram and dynamics at the mean field level.

Findings

Identification of a tricritical point in the phase diagram.

Existence of a first order transition with phase coexistence.

Observation of interrupted aging near the transition line.

Abstract

We study the equilibrium and dynamical properties of a spherical version of the frustrated Blume-Emery-Griffiths model at mean field level for attractive particle-particle coupling (K>0). Beyond a second order transition line from a paramagnetic to a (replica symmetric) spin glass phase, the density-temperature phase diagram is characterized by a tricritical point from which, interestingly, a first order transition line starts with coexistence of the two phases. In the Langevin dynamics the paramagnetic/spin glass discontinuous transition line is found to be dependent on the initial density; close to this line, on the paramagnetic side, the correlation-response plot displays interrupted aging.