Study of Chirality in the Two-Dimensional XY Spin Glass

Abstract

We study the chirality in the Villain form of the XY spin glass in two--dimensions by Monte Carlo simulations. We calculate the chiral-glass correlation length exponent $\nu_{\scriptscriptstyle CG}$ and find that $\nu_{\scriptscriptstyle CG} = 1.8 \pm 0.3$ in reasonable agreement with earlier studies. This indicates that the chiral and phase variables are decoupled on long length scales and diverge as $T \to 0$ with {\em different} exponents, since the spin-glass correlation length exponent was found, in earlier studies, to be about 1.0.