Theory of Random Magnets

DEC 01, 1988

After almost a decade of intense research on their unusual phases and even more unusual dynamical behavior, random magnets have emerged as prototypes for a wide variety of systems with frozen‐in disorder.

DOI: 10.1063/1.881141

Daniel S. Fisher

Geoffrey M. Grinstein

Anil Khurana

Much of the enormous increase in our understanding of collective phenomena during the past few decades has arisen from the study of magnetic systems. The formulation of concepts such as universality, broken symmetry, and scaling near continuous phase transitions, as well as the development of the powerful ideas of the renormalization group, have been strongly influenced by research in magnetism. This is due in part to the availability of a host of experimentally accessible magnetic systems, and in part to the remarkable fact that simple models of magnetism capture the essential physics of the phases and ordering transitions in more complicated systems.

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More about the authors

Daniel S. Fisher, Princeton University.

Geoffrey M. Grinstein, IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, N.Y..

Anil Khurana, PHYSICS TODAY.