From random walks to spin glasses

Abstract

The talk was a short review on systems which exhibit non-self-averaging effects: sums of random variables when the distribution has a long tail, mean field spin glasses, random map models and returns of a random walk to the origin. Non-self-averaging effects are identical in the case of sums of random variables and in the spin glass problem as predicted by the replica approach. Also we will see that for the random map models or for the problem of the returns of a random walk to the origin, the non-self-averaging effects coincide with the results of the replica approach when the number n of replica n = − 1 2 or n = −1.