Temperature dependence of effective fluctuation time scales in spin glasses

Abstract

Using a series of fast cooling protocols we have probed aging effects in the spin glass state as a function of temperature. Analyzing the logarithmic decay found at very long time scales within a simple phenomenological barrier model, leads to the extraction of the fluctuation time scale of the system at a particular temperature. This is the smallest dynamical time-scale, defining a lower-cut off in a hierarchical description of the dynamics. We find that this fluctuation time scale, which is approximately equal to atomic spin fluctuation time scales near the transition temperature, follows ageneralized Arrhenius law. We discuss the hypothesisthat, upon cooling to a measuring temperature within the spin glass state, there is a range of dynamically in-equivalent configurations in which the system can be trapped, and check within a numerical barrier model simulation, that this leads to sub-aging behavior in scaling aged TRM decay curves, as recently discussed theoretically, see arXiv:0902.3556 .