Potential energy landscape of finite-size mean-field models for glasses

TL;DR

This paper investigates finite-size fully connected spin-glass models, revealing their similarities to Lennard-Jones systems near the glass transition, and suggests a new approach to study activated processes in glasses.

Contribution

It demonstrates that finite-size mean-field spin-glass models exhibit glass-like properties, bridging the gap between theoretical models and real glass behavior.

Findings

Finite-size models show Lennard-Jones-like properties near the glass transition.

Thermodynamics near the transition is dominated by energy minima.

Finite-size corrections enable the study of activated processes in glasses.

Abstract

connected spin-glass models with a discontinuous transition. In the thermodynamic limit the equilibrium properties in the high temperature phase are described by the schematic Mode Coupling Theory of super-cooled liquids. We show that {\it finite-size} fully connected spin-glass models do exhibit properties typical of Lennard-Jones systems when both are near the critical glass transition, where thermodynamics is ruled by energy minima distribution. Our study opens the way to consider activated processes in real glasses through finite-size corrections (i.e. calculations beyond the saddle point approximation) in mean-field spin-glass models.