Interfaces in a random medium and replica symmetry breaking

M Mezard, G Parisi
1990 Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and General  
We develop a variational approach for studying interfaces and other manifolds in a disordered quenched medium. The method may be applied to problems which range from directed polymers to the interface of an Ising model in a random magnetic field. We find that replica symmetry is spontaneously broken and the results of the Flory approximation are recovered in a simple way. Corrections to this approximation may be computed in a systematic way.
doi:10.1088/0305-4470/23/23/008 fatcat:sbbqj3povbfbli7zaes5wiulom