Spin glasses

During the last decade the term 'spin glass' has become prominent in the literature on magnetism. It refers to magnetic alloys where the spins on the impurities become locked or frozen into random orientations below a characteristic temperature T 0 . In this article the properties of spin glasses are described with particular reference to the two archetypal examples AuFe and CuMn. Interest in spin glasses was mainly stimulated by some a.c. susceptibility measurements which showed sharp, cusp-like peaks, accurately defining T 0 and suggesting that some type of phase transition was occurring. The Mossbauer effect and the anomalous Hall effect also showed clear features at T 0 supporting this viewpoint. But measurements of the electrical resistivity and 'specific heat', here usually meaning the molar heat capacity, also the remanence, magnetic hysteresis and time-dependent effects observed in spin glasses were difficult to reconcile with a phase transition approach. This article discusses the results obtained from the very wide variety of experimental techniques which have been used to investigate spin glasses, and also deals with some of the important theoretical concepts which have arisen out of these studies. Then follows a short account of the many systems which have been found to exhibit spin glass behaviour and which suggest that it is a widespread magnetic state of matter. Lastly, an example is given which shows that some of the ideas of spin glasses are applicable to problems outside the sphere of magnetic alloys.