Composite operators in cubic field theories and link-overlap fluctuations in spin-glass models

We present a complete characterization of the fluctuations and correlations of the squared overlap in the Edwards-Anderson spin-glass model in zero field. The analysis reveals that the energy-energy correlation (and thus the specific heat) has a different critical behavior than the fluctuations of the link overlap in spite of the fact that the average energy and average link overlap have the same critical properties. More precisely the link-overlap fluctuations are larger than the specific heat according to a computation at first order in the 6-ε expansion. An unexpected outcome is that the link-overlap fluctuations have a subdominant power-law contribution characterized by an anomalous logarithmic prefactor which is absent in the specific heat. In order to compute the ε expansion we consider the problem of the renormalization of quadratic composite operators in a generic multicomponent cubic field theory: the results obtained have a range of applicability beyond spin-glass theory.