From Parisi to Boltzmann

Abstract

We sketch a new framework for the analysis of disordered systems, in particular mean field spin glasses, which is variational in nature and within the formalism of classical thermodynamics. For concreteness, only the Sherrington–Kirkpatrick model is considered here. For this we show how the Parisi solution (replica symmetric, or when replica symmetry is broken) emerges, in large but finite volumes, from a high temperature expansion to second order of the Gibbs potential with respect to order parameters encoding the law of the effective fields. In contrast with classical systems where convexity in the order parameters is the default situation, the functionals employed here are, at infinite temperature, concave: this feature is eventually due to the Gaussian nature of the interaction and implies, in particular, that the canonical Boltzmann-Gibbs variational principles must be reversed. The considerations suggest that thermodynamical phase transitions are intimately related to the divergence of the infinite expansions.