Rethinking mean-field glassy dynamics and its relation with the energy landscape: the awkward case of the spherical mixed p-spin model

Abstract: The spherical p-spin model is not only a fundamental model in statistical mechanics of disordered system, but has recently gained popularity since many hard problems in machine learning can be mapped on it. Thus the study of the out of equilibrium dynamics in this model is interesting both for the glass physics and for its implications on algorithms solving NP-hard problems. We revisit the long-time limit of the out of equilibrium dynamics of mean-field spherical mixed p-spin models. We consider quenches (gradient descent dynamics) starting from initial conditions thermalized at some temperature in the ergodic phase. We perform numerical integration of the dynamical mean-field equations of the model and we find an unexpected dynamical phase transition. Below an onset temperature, higher than the dynamical transition temperature, the asymptotic energy goes below the "threshold energy" of the dominant marginal minima of the energy function and memory of the initial condition is kept. This behavior, not present in the pure spherical p-spin model, resembles closely the one observed in simulations of glass-forming liquids. We then investigate the nature of the asymptotic dynamics, finding an aging solution that relaxes towards deep marginal minima, evolving on a restricted marginal manifold. Careful analysis, however, rules out simple aging solutions. We compute the constrained complexity in the aim of connecting the asymptotic solution to the energy landscape.