The field cooled state of canonical spin-glass revisited

Canonical spin-glass (SG) is an enigmatic system in condensed matter physics. In spite of the intense activities of last five decades several questions regarding the nature of the SG phase transition and the SG ground state are yet to be resolved completely. In this backdrop we have revisited the field cooled state of canonical spin-glass. We have experimentally studied magnetic response in two canonical spin-glass systems AuMn(1.8%) and AgMn(1.1%), both in the field cooled (FC) as well as zero field cooled (ZFC) state. We show that the well known magnetic memory effect, which clearly established earlier the metastable nature of the ZFC state in SG, is also present in the FC state. The results of our experimental study indicate that the FC state also is a non-equilibrium state, and hence the energy landscape involved is a non-trivial one. This in turn seriously questions the picture of spin-glass transformation as a second order thermodynamic phase transition.