Evidence of the de Almeida–Thouless transition in three-dimensional spin glasses
Phys. Rev. E 114, 034137 – Published 21 September, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/g8s9-t73p
Abstract
The nature of spin-glass states in a magnetic field remains a major open problem in statistical physics. The existence of the de Almeida–Thouless (dAT) transition for three-dimensional (3D) spin glasses in a field is still debated. We introduce a computational method to define the spin-glass susceptibility, which is robust against the broad tail in the overlap distribution that undermines conventional analyses. Applying this approach to the Edwards-Anderson spin-glass model in 2D and 3D, and contrasting with the 3D Ising (without disorder) and mean-field spin-glass models, we find a stark difference: the locus of susceptibility maxima bends to the right in the field-temperature plane for the Ising and 2D spin-glass cases, indicating a supercritical crossover line, but bends to the left for the mean field and 3D spin glasses—a signature of the dAT line. Finite-size scaling further suggests that the peak susceptibility diverges with system size in 3D spin glasses under a field, while saturating in 2D. These results provide direct numerical evidence for the dAT transition in 3D, supporting the replica symmetry breaking scenario.
