Spin Glasses: A Challenge for Mathematicians

Download or read book Spin Glasses: A Challenge for Mathematicians written by Michel Talagrand and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2003-07-11 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the eighties, a group of theoretical physicists introduced several models for certain disordered systems, called "spin glasses". These models are simple and rather canonical random structures, that physicists studied by non-rigorous methods. They predicted spectacular behaviors, previously unknown in probability theory. They believe these behaviors occur in many models of considerable interest for several branches of science (statistical physics, neural networks and computer science). This book introduces in a rigorous manner this exciting new area to the mathematically minded reader. It requires no knowledge whatsoever of any physics, and contains proofs in complete detail of much of what is rigorously known on spin glasses at the time of writing.