STUDY OF A SIMPLE HYPOTHESIS FOR THE MEAN-FIELD THEORY OF SPIN-GLASSES.

A detailed study is presented of the consequences of a simple hypothesis for the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model, namely that in the spin-glass phase the entropy is independent of the applied magnetic field. This hypothesis leads to predictions in excellent agreement with the results of available Monte-Carlo simulations, for the ground-state energy, the entropy in zero field, the energy and spontaneous magnetization as a function of the interaction mean value J//0. The relevance of mean-field theory to real spin-glass materials is discussed, underlying the extant areas of agreement and suggesting new experiments.