The end of aging in spin glasses

From Santa Fe Institute Event Wiki

Spin glasses are complex magnetic materials which undergo an apparent disorder induced phase transition and exhibit both memory and aging effects. Aging phenomena were first discovered in these materials approximately 25 years ago in the Thermoremenant Magnetization (TRM) and have been instrumental as a probe of complex equilibrium and non-equilibrium dynamics. I will briefly review basic concepts in spin glass physics and some of the major experiments in aging in these materials. I will then discuss some recent experiments we have performed which indicate that what happens in the first few seconds after the birth of the spin glass phase by thermal quenching can have effects ranging out to years or longer. We also find that aging in these materials has a temporal limit. Finally, I will discuss a relatively simple phenomenological model which appears to be able to account for many of the observations.