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Spin Glasses

Certain metallic alloys have magnetic interactions which oscillate in value as a function of the separation of the different atoms.

These alloys can be created in an amorphous state --- the positions of the atoms are random and disordered like a glass, rather than regular and ordered like a crystal.

The magnetic interactions between spins are thus sometimes ferromagnetic, sometimes antiferromagnetic. This is what is known as a spin glass.

Spin glasses have a number of physically and mathematically interesting properties, and are the subject of much research.



Paul Coddington, Northeast Parallel Architectures Center at Syracuse University, paulc@npac.syr.edu