Glassy Dynamics in a Model without Disorder: Spin Analog of a Structural Glass

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that a non-disordered frustrated spin model can exhibit glass-like dynamics, including ergodicity breaking and trapping phenomena, similar to structural glasses, revealed through Monte Carlo simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a spin model without disorder that mimics structural glass behavior, providing insights into glassy dynamics without randomness.

Findings

System remains ergodic in supercooled state

System becomes non-ergodic and traps form below a characteristic temperature

Glass transition associated with shear instability

Abstract

We have analyzed a non-randomly frustrated spin model which exhibits behavior remarkably similar to the phenomenology of structural glasses. The high-temperature disordered phase undergoes a strong first-order transition to a long-range ordered structure. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we have studied the behavior of the supercooled state by quenching to temperatures below this transition temperature. For a range of supercooling, the system remains ergodic and exhibits dynamics characteristic of supercooled liquids. Below a certain characteristic temperature, however, the system freezes into a "glassy" phase. In this phase, the system is non-ergodic and evolves through a distribution of traps characterized by a power-law distribution of trapping times. This change in the dynamic behavior is concurrent with the appearance of a shear instability.