On the Statistical Physics of Spin Glasses

These notes are intended to provide a brief introduction to the recent progresses on the physical understanding of the equilibrium properties of spin glasses (in mean field theory). In order to try and make them more accessible, I have systematically avoided all the computations, which are described in many good recent reviews (see for instance /1–4/) in which one will find also more extended references. An introduction to the replica method, from which a large part of the following results have been deduced, can be found in /4/. Parts of the following text are inspired from a “pedagogical” article I wrote in french recently /18/.