Real space analysis of inherent structures

TL;DR

This paper investigates the real space properties of inherent structures in a disordered Potts model, revealing how domain sizes and characteristic length scales evolve with temperature and aging, providing insights into glassy behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a domain decomposition approach to analyze inherent structures in a disordered Potts model, highlighting the exponential distribution of domain sizes and their temperature-dependent growth.

Findings

Domain sizes are exponentially distributed.

Characteristic length scale increases as temperature decreases.

Length scale also grows during aging at fixed temperature.

Abstract

We study a generalization of the one-dimensional disordered Potts model, which exhibits glassy properties at low temperature. The real space properties of inherent structures visited dynamically are analyzed through a decomposition into domains over which the energy is minimized. The size of these domains is distributed exponentially, defining a characteristic length scale which grows in equilibrium when lowering temperature, as well as in the aging regime at a given temperature. In the low temperature limit, this length can be interpreted as the distance between `excited' domains within the inherent structures.