Spin Glasses and Random Fields

Book excerpt: The last few years have seen many developments in the study of ?frustrated? systems, such as spin glasses and random fields. In addition, the application of the idea of spin glasses to other branches of physics, such as vortex lines in high temperature superconductors, protein folding, structural glasses, and the vulcanization of rubber, has been flourishing. The earlier reviews are several years old, so now is an appropriate time to summarize the recent developments. The articles in this book have been written by leading researchers and include theoretical and experimental studies, and large-scale numerical work (using state-of-the-art algorithms designed specifically for spin-glass-type problems), as well as analytical studies.