arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to D. A. Stariolo.
We study the dynamic and metastable properties of the fully connected Ising $p$-spin model with finite number of variables. We define trapping energies, trapping times and self correlation functions and we analyse their statistical properties in comparison to the predictions of trap models.
The critical behavior of adsorbed monomers that reversibly polymerize into linear chains with restricted orientations relative to the substrate has been studied. In the model considered here, which is known as self-assembled rigid rods (SAARs) model, the surface is represented by a twodimensional lattice and a continuous orientational transition occurs as a function of temperature and coverage. The phase diagrams were obtained for the square, triangular and honeycomb lattices by means of Monte Carlo simulations and finite-size scaling analysis. The numerical results were compared with Bethe-Peierls analytical predictions about the orientational transition for the square and triangular lattices. The analysis of the phase diagrams, along with the behavior of the critical average rod lengths, showed that the critical properties of the model do not depend on the structure of the lattice at low temperatures (coverage), revealing a one-dimensional behavior in this regime. Finally, the universality class of the SAARs model, which has been subject of controversy, has been revisited.
We study the dynamical behavior of a square lattice Ising model with exchange and dipolar interactions by means of Monte Carlo simulations. After a sudden quench to low temperatures we find that the system may undergo a coarsening process where stripe phases with different orientations compete or alternatively it can relax initially to a metastable nematic phase and then decay to the equilibrium stripe phase through nucleation. We measure the distribution of equilibration times for both processes and compute their relative probability of occurrence as a function of temperature and system size. This peculiar relaxation mechanism is due to the strong metastability of the nematic phase, which goes deep in the low temperature stripe phase. We also measure quasi-equilibrium autocorrelations in a wide range of temperatures. They show a distinct decay to a plateau that we identify as due to a finite fraction of frozen spins in the nematic phase. We find indications that the plateau is a finite size effect. Relaxation times as a function of temperature in the metastable region show super-Arrhenius behavior, suggesting a possible glassy behavior of the system at low temperatures.
Particle motion of a Lennard-Jones supercooled liquid near the glass transition is studied by molecular dynamics simulations. We analyze the wave vector dependence of relaxation times in the incoherent self scattering function and show that at least three different regimes can be identified and its scaling properties determined. The transition from one regime to another happens at characteristic length scales. The lengthscale associated with the onset of Fickian diffusion corresponds to the maximum size of heterogeneities in the system, and the characterisitic timescale is several times larger than the alpha relaxation time. A second crossover lengthscale is observed, which corresponds to the typical time and length of heterogeneities, in agreement with results from four point functions. The different regimes can be traced back in the behavior of the van Hove distribution of displacements, which shows a characteristic exponential regime in the heterogeneous region before the crossover to gaussian diffusion and should be observable in experiments. Our results show that it is possible to obtain characteristic length scales of heterogeneities through the computation of two point functions at different times.
We study the critical properties of a two--dimensional Ising model with competing ferromagnetic exchange and dipolar interactions, which models an ultra-thin magnetic film with high out--of--plane anisotropy in the monolayer limit. We present numerical evidence showing that two different scenarios appear in the model for different values of the exchange to dipolar intensities ratio, namely, a single first order stripe - tetragonal phase transition or two phase transitions at different temperatures with an intermediate Ising nematic phase between the stripe and the tetragonal ones. Our results are very similar to those predicted by Abanov et al [Phys. Rev. B 51, 1023 (1995)], but suggest a much more complex critical behavior than the predicted by those authors for both the stripe-nematic and the nematic-tetragonal phase transitions. We also show that the presence of diverging free energy barriers at the stripe-nematic transition makes possible to obtain by slow cooling a metastable supercooled nematic state down to temperatures well below the transition one.
The Topological Hypothesis states that phase transitions should be related to changes in the topology of configuration space. The necessity of such changes has already been demonstrated. We characterize exactly the topology of the configuration space of the short range Berlin-Kac spherical model, for spins lying in hypercubic lattices of dimension d. We find a continuum of changes in the topology and also a finite number of discontinuities in some topological functions. We show however that these discontinuities do not coincide with the phase transitions which happen for d >= 3, and conversely, that no topological discontinuity can be associated to them. This is the first short range, confining potential for which the existence of special topological changes are shown not to be sufficient to infer the occurrence of a phase transition.
We critically analyze the possibility of finding signatures of a phase transition by looking exclusively at static quantities of statistical systems, like e.g., the topology of potential energy sub-manifolds (PES). This topological hypothesis has been successfully tested in a few statistical models but up to now there is no rigorous proof of its general validity. We make a new test of it analyzing the, probably, simplest example of a non trivial system undergoing a continuous phase transition: the completely connected version of the spherical model. Going through the topological properties of its PES it is shown that, as expected, the phase transition is correlated with a change in their topology. Nevertheless this change, as reflected in the behavior of a particular topological invariant, the Euler characteristic, is small at variance with the strong singularity observed in other systems. Furthermore, it is shown that in the presence of an external field, when the phase transition is destroyed, a similar topology change in the sub-manifolds is still observed at the maximum value of the potential energy manifold, a level which nevertheless is thermodynamically inaccessible. This suggests that static properties of the PES are not enough in order to decide whether a phase transition will take place, some input from dynamics seems necessary.
A comparative study of the dynamics of inherent structures at low temperatures is performed on different models of glass formers: a three dimensional Lennard-Jones binary mixture (LJBM), facilitated spin models (either symmetrically constrained, SCIC, or asymmetrically, ACIC) and the trap model. We use suitable correlation functions introduced in a previous work which allow to distinguish the behaviour between models with or without spatial or topological structure. Furthermore, the correlations between inherent structures behave differently in the cases of strong (SCIC) and fragile (ACIC, LJBM) glasses, as a consequence of the different role played by energy barriers when the temperature is lowered. The similarities in the behaviour of the ACIC and LJBM suggest a common nature of the glassy dynamics for both systems.
We analyze by means of extensive computer simulations the out of equilibrium dynamics of Edwards-Anderson spin glasses in d=4 and d=6 dimensions with +-J interactions. In particular, we focus our analysis on the scaling properties of the two-time autocorrelation function in a range of temperatures from T=0.07 T_c to T=0.75 T_c in both systems. We observe that the aging dynamics of the +-J models is different from that observed in the corresponding Gaussian models. In both the 4d and 6d models at very low temperatures we study the effects of discretization of energy levels. Strong interrupted aging behaviors are found. We argue that this is because in the times accessible to our simulations the systems are only able to probe activated dynamics through the lowest discrete energy levels and remain trapped around nearly flat regions of the energy landscape. For temperatures T >= 0.5 T_c in 4d we find logarithmic scalings that are compatible with dynamical ultrametricity, while in 6d the relaxation can also be described by super-aging scalings.
In a Comment (cond-mat/0103444) on our recent paper "Two time scales and violation of FDT in a finite dimensional model for structural glasses" [1], A. de Candia and A. Coniglio show evidence that the equilibrium overlap distribution P(q) of the frustrated Ising lattice gas (FILG) does not coincide with the one that could be estimated from the off-equilibrium results presented in [1]. In this Reply we show new results on the glassy phase of the FILG that clarify the controversy. Nevertheless, the structure of the equilibrium P(q) remains an open problem. [1] F. Ricci-Tersenghi, D. A. Stariolo and J. J. Arenzon, Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 4473 (2000).
The dynamical properties of a three dimensional model glass, the frustrated Ising lattice gas (FILG) are studied by Monte Carlo simulations. We present results of compression experiments, where the chemical potential is either slowly or abruptly changed, as well as simulations at constant density. One time quantities like density and two time ones like correlations, responses and mean square displacements are measured, and the departure from equilibrium clearly characterized. The aging scenario, particularly in the case of density autocorrelations is reminiscent of spin glass phenomenology with violations of the Fluctuation-dissipation theorem, typical of systems with one replica symmetry breaking. The FILG, as a valid on-lattice model of structural glasses can be described with tools developed in spin glass theory and, being a finite dimensional model, can open the way for a systematic study of activated processes in glasses.
In this work we study numerically the out of equilibrium dynamics of the Hopfield model for associative memory inside its spin-glass phase. Besides its interest as a neural network model it can also be considered as a prototype of fully connected magnetic systems with randomness and frustration. By adjusting the ratio between the number of stored configurations $p$ and the total number of neurons $N$ one can control the phase-space structure, whose complexity can vary between the simple mean-field ferromagnet (when $p=1$) and that of the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick spin-glass model (for a properly taken limit of an infinite number of patterns). In particular, little attention has been devoted to the spin-glass phase of this model. In this work we analyse the two-time auto-correlation function, the decay of the magnetization and the distribution of overlaps between states. The results show that within the spin-glass phase of the model the dynamics exhibits ageing phenomena and presents features that suggest a non trivial breaking of replica symmetry.
Using Grassmann variables and an analogy with two dimensional electrostatics, we obtain the average eigenvalue distribution $ρ(ω)$ of ensembles of $N \times N$ asymmetrically diluted Hopfield matrices in the limit $N \rightarrow \infty$. We found that in the limit of strong dilution the distribution is uniform in a circle in the complex plane.