On the origin of ultrametricity

Giorgio Parisi, Federico Ricci-Tersenghi

Published 1999-05-13, updated 1999-12-10Version 2

In this paper we show that in systems where the probability distribution of the the overlap is non trivial in the infinity volume limit, the property of ultrametricity can be proved in general starting from two very simple and natural assumptions: each replica is equivalent to the others (replica equivalence or stochastic stability) and all the mutual information about a pair of equilibrium configurations is encoded in their mutual distance or overlap (separability or overlap equivalence).