Spin- and Pair-Density-Wave Glasses

Spontaneous breaking of translational symmetry, known as density-wave order, is common in nature. However, such states are strongly sensitive to impurities or other forms of frozen disorder leading to fascinating glassy phenomena. We analyze impurity effects on a particularly ubiquitous form of broken translation symmetry in solids: a spin-density wave (SDW) with spatially modulated magnetic order. Related phenomena occur in pair-density-wave (PDW) superconductors where the superconducting order is spatially modulated. For weak disorder, we find that the SDW or PDW order can generically give way to a SDW or PDW glass—new phases of matter with a number of striking properties, which we introduce and characterize here. In particular, they exhibit an interesting combination of conventional (symmetry-breaking) and spin-glass (Edwards-Anderson) order. This is reflected in the dynamic response of such a system, which—as expected for a glass—is extremely slow in certain variables, but, surprisingly, is fast in others. Our results apply to all uniaxial metallic SDW systems where the ordering vector is incommensurate with the crystalline lattice. In addition, the possibility of a PDW glass has important consequences for some recent theoretical and experimental work on La_(2−x)Ba_xCu_2O_4.