Equilibrium and off-equilibrium simulations of chiral-glass order in three-dimensional Heisenberg spin glasses

TL;DR

This study uses equilibrium and off-equilibrium Monte Carlo simulations to investigate chiral-glass and spin-glass orderings in three-dimensional Heisenberg spin glasses, revealing a finite-temperature chiral-glass transition without conventional spin-glass order.

Contribution

It demonstrates the existence of a finite-temperature chiral-glass transition in isotropic Heisenberg spin glasses, distinct from the spin-glass transition, and explores effects of magnetic anisotropy.

Findings

Chiral-glass transition occurs at finite temperature without spin-glass order.

Chirality exhibits pronounced aging effects, unlike spin autocorrelation.

Magnetic anisotropy causes mixing of spin and chirality behaviors.

Abstract

Spin-glass and chiral-glass orderings in three-dimensional Heisenberg spin glasses are studied both by equilibrium and off-equilibrium Monte Carlo simulations. Fully isotropic model is found to exhibit a finite-temperature chiral-glass transition without the conventional spin-glass order. Although chirality is an Ising-like quantity from symmetry, universality class of the chiral-glass transition appears to be different from that of the standard Ising spin glass. In the off-equilibrium simulation, while the spin autocorrelation exhibits only an interrupted aging, the chirality autocorrelation persists to exhibit a pronounced aging effect reminisecnt of the one observed in the mean-field model. Effects of random magnetic anisotropy is also studied by the off-equilibrium simulation, in which asymptotic mixing of the spin and the chirality is observed.