Phase Transition for Quenched Coupled Replicas in a Plaquette Spin Model of Glasses

Robert L. Jack and Juan P. Garrahan
Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 055702 – Published 2 February 2016
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Abstract

We study a three-dimensional plaquette spin model whose low temperature dynamics is glassy, due to localized defects and effective kinetic constraints. The thermodynamics of this system is smooth at all temperatures. We show that coupling it to a second system with a fixed (quenched) configuration leads to a phase transition, at finite coupling. The order parameter is the overlap between the copies, and the transition is between phases of low and high overlap. We find critical points whose properties are consistent with random-field Ising universality. We analyze the interfacial free energy cost between the high- and low-overlap states that coexist at (and below) the critical point, and we use this cost as the basis for a finite-size scaling analysis. We discuss these results in the context of mean-field and dynamical facilitation theories of the glass transition.

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  • Received 27 August 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.055702

© 2016 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Robert L. Jack1 and Juan P. Garrahan2

  • 1Department of Physics, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, United Kingdom
  • 2School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, United Kingdom

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Issue

Vol. 116, Iss. 5 — 5 February 2016

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