Inverse melting and inverse freezing in a three-state spin-glass model with finite connectivity

Ising spin glass in a random network with a Gaussian random field

We investigate thermodynamic phase transitions of the joint presence of spin glass (SG) and random field (RF) using a random graph model that allows us to deal with the quenched disorder. Therefore, the connectivity becomes a controllable parameter in our theory, allowing us to answer what the differences are between this description and the mean-field theory i.e., the fully connected theory. We have considered the random network random field Ising model where the spin exchange interaction as well as the RF are random variables following a Gaussian distribution. The results were found within the replica symmetric (RS) approximation, whose stability is obtained using the two-replica method. This also puts our work in the context of a broader discussion, which is the RS stability as a function of the connectivity. In particular, our results show that for small connectivity there is a region at zero temperature where the RS solution remains stable above a given value of the magnetic field no matter the strength of RF. Consequently, our results show important differences with the crossover between the RF and SG regimes predicted by the fully connected theory.

Effect of geometrical frustration on inverse freezing

The interplay between geometrical frustration (GF) and inverse freezing (IF) is studied within a cluster approach. The model considers first-neighbor (J_{1}) and second-neighbor (J_{2}) intracluster antiferromagnetic interactions between Ising spins on a checkerboard lattice and long-range disordered couplings (J) among clusters. We obtain phase diagrams of temperature versus J_{1}/J in two cases: the absence of J_{2} interaction and the isotropic limit J_{2}=J_{1}, where GF takes place. An IF reentrant transition from the spin-glass (SG) to paramagnetic (PM) phase is found for a certain range of J_{1}/J in both cases. The J_{1} interaction leads to a SG state with high entropy at the same time that can introduce a low-entropy PM phase. In addition, it is observed that the cluster size plays an important role. The GF increases the PM phase entropy, but larger clusters can give an entropic advantage for the SG phase that favors IF. Therefore, our results suggest that disordered systems with antiferromagnetic clusters can exhibit an IF transition even in the presence of GF.

Inverse transitions in a spin-glass model on a scale-free network

In this paper, we will investigate critical phenomena by considering a model spin glass on scale-free networks. For this purpose, we consider the Ghatak-Sherrington (GS) model, a spin-1 spin-glass model with a crystal field, instead of the usual Ising-type model. Scale-free networks on which the GS model is placed are constructed from the static model, in which the number of vertices is fixed from the beginning. On the basis of the replica-symmetric solution, we obtain the analytical solutions, i.e., free energy and order parameters, and we derive the various phase diagrams consisting of the paramagnetic, ferromagnetic, and spin-glass phases as functions of temperature T, the degree exponent λ, the mean degree K, and the fraction of the ferromagnetic interactions ρ. Since the present model is based on the GS model, which considers the three states (S = 0, ± 1), the S = 0 state plays a crucial role in the λ-dependent critical behavior: glass transition temperature T(g) has a finite value, even when 2 < λ < 3. In addition, when the crystal field becomes nonzero, the present model clearly exhibits three types of inverse transitions, which occur when an ordered phase is more entropic than a disordered one.