Multifractality in spin glasses.

Baity-Jesi, Marco; Calore, Enrico; Cruz, Andrés; Fernández, Luis Antonio; Gil-Narvión, José Miguel; González-Adalid Pemartín, Isidoro; Gordillo-Guerrero, Antonio; Íñiguez, David et al. · Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A · 2024

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

We unveil the multifractal behavior of Ising spin glasses in their low-temperature phase. Using the Janus II custom-built supercomputer, the spin-glass correlation function is studied locally. Dramatic fluctuations are found when pairs of sites at the same distance are compared. The scaling of these fluctuations, as the spin-glass coherence length grows with time, is characterized through the computation of the singularity spectrum and its corresponding Legendre transform. A comparatively small number of site pairs controls the average correlation that governs the response to a magnetic field. We explain how this scenario of dramatic fluctuations (at length scales smaller than the coherence length) can be reconciled with the smooth, self-averaging behavior that has long been considered to describe spin-glass dynamics.