About sixty years ago, the anomalous magnetic response of certain magnetic alloys drew the attention of theoretical physicists. It soon became clear that understanding these systems, now called spin glasses, would give rise to a new branch of statistical physics. As physical materials, spin glasses were found to be as useless as they were exotic. They have nevertheless been recognized as paradigmatic examples of complex systems with applications to problems as diverse as neural networks, amorphous solids, biological molecules, social and economic interactions, information theory and constraint satisfaction problems.This book presents an encyclopaedic overview of the broad range of these applications. More than 30 contributions are compiled, written by many of the leading researchers who have contributed to these developments over the last few decades. Some timely and cutting-edge applications are also discussed. This collection serves well as an introduction and summary of disordered and glassy systems for advanced undergraduates, graduate students and practitioners interested in the topic.

This book contains a detailed and self-contained presentation of the replica theory of infinite range spin glasses. The authors also explain recent theoretical developments, paying particular attention to new applications in the study of optimization theory and neural networks. About two-thirds of the book are a collection of the most interesting and pedagogical articles on the subject.

Spin glasses are disordered magnetic systems that have led to the development of mathematical tools with an array of real-world applications, from airline scheduling to neural networks. Spin Glasses and Complexity offers the most concise, engaging, and accessible introduction to the subject, fully explaining what spin glasses are, why they are important, and how they are opening up new ways of thinking about complexity. This one-of-a-kind guide to spin glasses begins by explaining the fundamentals of order and symmetry in condensed matter physics and how spin glasses fit into--and modify--this framework. It then explores how spin-glass concepts and ideas have found applications in areas as diverse as computational complexity, biological and artificial neural networks, protein folding, immune response maturation, combinatorial optimization, and social network modeling. Providing an essential overview of the history, science, and growing significance of this exciting field, Spin Glasses and Complexity also features a forward-looking discussion of what spin glasses may teach us in the future about complex systems. This is a must-have book for students and practitioners in the natural and social sciences, with new material even for the experts.

A comprehensive account of the theory, experimental work and computer modelling of spin glasses.

Spin glass theory is really one of the most fascinating and appealing topics in theoretical and statistical physics. Since the oldest paper in 1959, such systems, which appearently are neither ferromagnetic nor antiferromagnetic, have been studied far and wide, but a full and complete understanding of the transition of disordered systems is still missing. The physical reason of their complexity is that the free energy at low temperature occurs as a rough landscape with a huge number of metastable states and the conventional statistical techniques fail.

This superb new book is one of the first publications in recent years to provide a broad overview of this interdisciplinary field. Most of the book is written in a self contained manner, assuming only a general knowledge of statistical mechanics and basic probabilty theory . It provides the reader with a sound introduction to the field and to the analytical techniques necessary to follow its most recent developments

Three scientists from the L.D. Landau Institute of Theoretical Physics, Moscow, review recent developments in the theory of spin glasses and related strongly disordered systems. They discuss in particular the problems of irreversibility and nonergodicity in the framework of the mean field theory, a phase transition in three- dimensional spin glasses, and glass-like systems with hidden correlations. Addressed to researchers in theoretical physics. Book club price $59. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Presenting and developing the theory of spin glasses for mathematical physicists and probabilists working in disordered systems.