Lack of self-averaging in random systems—Liability or asset?

Avishay Efrat and Moshe Schwartz

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2014, vol. 414, issue C, 137-142

Abstract: The study of quenched random systems is facilitated by the idea that the ensemble averages describe the thermal averages for any specific realization of the couplings, provided that the system is large enough. Careful examination suggests that this idea might have a flaw, when the correlation length becomes of the order of the size of the system. We find that certain bounded quantities are not self-averaging when the correlation length becomes of the order of the size of the system. This suggests that the lack of self-averaging, expressed in terms of properly chosen signal-to-noise ratios, may serve to identify phase boundaries. This is demonstrated by using such signal-to-noise ratios to identify the boundary of the ferromagnetic phase of the random field Ising system and compare the findings with more traditional measures.

Keywords: Self-averaging; Signal-to-noise; Correlations; Phase-transition; Ising; Random (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437114005524
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:414:y:2014:i:c:p:137-142

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2014.06.071

Access Statistics for this article

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications is currently edited by K. A. Dawson, J. O. Indekeu, H.E. Stanley and C. Tsallis

More articles in Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().