The effect of pure state structure on nonequilibrium dynamics

Motivated by short-range Ising spin glasses, we review some rigorous results and their consequences for the relation between the number/nature of equilibrium pure states and nonequilibrium dynamics. Two of the consequences for spin glass dynamics following an instantaneous deep quench to a temperature with broken spin flip symmetry are: (1) almost all initial configurations lie on the boundary between the basins of attraction of multiple pure states; (2) unless there are uncountably many pure states with almost all pairs having zero overlap, there can be no equilibration to a pure state as time . We discuss the relevance of these results to the difficulty of equilibration of spin glasses. We also review some results concerning the 'nature versus nurture' problem of whether the large-t behavior of both ferromagnets and spin glasses following a deep quench is determined more by the initial configuration (nature) or by the dynamics realization (nurture).