A conjectured scenario for order-parameter fluctuations in spin glasses
Abstract
We study order-parameter fluctuations (OPF) in disordered systems by considering the behavior of some recently introduced paramaters
G,
G
c
which have proven very useful to locate phase transitions. We prove that both parameters G (for disconnected overlap disorder averages) and
G
c
(for connected disorder averages) take the respective universal values 1/3 and 13/31 in the
T→0
limit for any {\em finite} volume provided the ground state is {\em unique} and there is no gap in the ground state local-field distributions, conditions which are met in generic spin-glass models with continuous couplings and no gap at zero coupling. This makes
G,
G
c
ideal parameters to locate phase transitions in disordered systems much alike the Binder cumulant is for ordered systems. We check our results by exactly computing OPF in a simple example of uncoupled spins in the presence of random fields and the one-dimensional Ising spin glass. At finite temperatures, we discuss in which conditions the value 1/3 for G may be recovered by conjecturing different scenarios depending on whether OPF are finite or vanish in the infinite-volume limit. In particular, we discuss replica equivalence and its natural consequence
lim
V→∞
G(V,T)=1/3
when OPF are finite. As an example of a model where OPF vanish and replica equivalence does not give information about G we study the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick spherical spin-glass model by doing numerical simulations for small sizes. Again we find results compatible with G=1/3 in the spin-glass phase.