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This PhD thesis focuses on the mutual interplay of frustration and quenched disorder in magnetic insulators. Frustrated quantum magnets are known to host a plethora of interesting many-body phenomena ranging from noncollinear N\'el ordering to spin liquid phases. In this thesis, the consequences of the breakdown of translation symmetry, a widely occurring phenomenon in real materials, are studied in several examples of frustrated spin systems. The thesis is split into two parts dedicated to different kinds of frustrated magnets and the effects of quenched random perturbations in them. In the first part, bond randomness in frustrated noncollinear ordering is considered. Noncollinear magnetic orders originating from the spontaneous breakdown of continuous spin rotation symmetries at zero temperature are found to be unstable in the presence of exchange randomness. It is shown that in this case, the frustrated N\'{e}el ordering is destroyed for any magnitude of random exchange disorder. The resulting disordered ground states, however, possess interesting distinctions depending on the precise nature of the broken spin rotation symmetry. For SU(2) Heisenberg spins, it is demonstrated that the weak disordered ground describes a classical spin glass at zero temperature with a finite correlation length. At higher disorder, enhanced quantum fluctuations are predicted to modify that ground state into a random-singlet-like form. On the other hand, for noncollinear XY spin systems with U(1) or SO(2) symmetry which have stable integer-valued vortex topological defects, it is instead found that the weak disorder and the strong disorder ground states are distinct even at the classical level. The former has a quasi-long range order spin arrangement, while the latter exhibits a truly short-range ordered state. These two phases are shown to be separated by a Kosterlitz-Thouless-like phase transition point where vortex unbinding takes place. The spontaneously broken chiral degeneracy of noncollinear N\'el ordering is witnessed to be robust up to the point of the vortex-driven phase transition. In the second part of the thesis, the focus is switched to the effects of quenched disorder on quantum spin liquids. These are quantum disordered phases of matter with long-range entanglement, topological order, and fractionalised excitations that often arise in frustrated spin systems. The U(1) Dirac spin liquid with its magnetic monopole excitations has been identified as a parent state for N\'{e}el, valence-bond solid, and algebraic spin liquid phases. In this thesis, the fate of this state is studied in the presence of quenched random perturbations. It is demonstrated that a wide class of random perturbations induce monopole-driven confinement of the fractionalised quasi-particles of the spin liquid, leading to the onset of a spin glass-like order. Finally, dilution effects in the $\rm Z_2$ spin liquid phase of the Kitaev model are discussed in the presence of generic symmetry allowed interactions. The spin-liquid state remains stable when the non-Kitaev perturbations and dilution are small. However, the low-energy properties of the ground state are altered. It is shown that the degeneracies from the Majorana zero modes, which are known to localise at defect sites of the Kitaev spin liquid, are generically lifted by the non-Kitaev perturbations. Consequently, a dilution-tuned impurity band with a finite density of states is found to emerge.

Dans cette thèse, on étudie des processus stochastiques issus de la physique statistique. Le mouvement Brownien fractionnaire, objet central des premiers chapitres, généralise le mouvement Brownien aux cas où la mémoire est importante pour la dynamique. Ces effets de mémoire apparaissent par exemple dans les systèmes complexes et la diffusion anormale. L’absence de la propriété de Markov rend difficile l’étude probabiliste du processus. On développe une approche perturbative autour du mouvement Brownien pour obtenir de nouveaux résultats, sur des observables liées aux statistiques des extrêmes. En plus de leurs applications physiques, on explore les liens de ces résultats avec des objets mathématiques, comme les lois de Lévy et la constante de Pickands. / In this thesis, we study stochastic processes appearing in different areas of statistical physics: Firstly, fractional Brownian motion is a generalization of the well-known Brownian motion to include memory. Memory effects appear for example in complex systems and anomalous diffusion, and are difficult to treat analytically, due to the absence of the Markov property. We develop a perturbative expansion around standard Brownian motion to obtain new results for this case. We focus on observables related to extreme-value statistics, with links to mathematical objects: Levy’s arcsine laws and Pickands’ constant. Secondly, the model of elastic interfaces in disordered media is investigated. We consider the case of a Brownian random disorder force. We study avalanches, i.e. the response of the system to a kick, for which several distributions of observables are calculated analytically. To do so, the initial stochastic equation is solved using a deterministic non-linear instanton equation. Avalanche observables are characterized by power-law distributions at small-scale with universal exponents, for which we give new results.

De nombreux systèmes complexes soumis à un ajout continu d'énergie réagissent à cet ajout par une accumulation de tension au cours du temps, interrompue par de soudaines libérations d'énergie appelées avalanches. Récemment, il a été remarqué que plusieurs propriétés élémentaires de la dynamique d'avalanche sont issues de processus de relaxation ayant lieu à une échelle microscopique, processus qui sont négligés dans la plupart des modèles. Lors de ma thèse, j'ai étudié deux modèles classiques d'avalanches, modifiés par l'ajout d'une forme de relaxation la plus simple possible. Le premier système est une interface viscoélastique tirée à travers un milieu désordonné. En champ moyen, nous prouvons que l'interface a un comportement périodique caractérisé par une nouvelle échelle temporelle (émergente), avec des avalanches qui touchent l'ensemble du système. Le calcul semi-analytique de la force de friction agissant sur la surface donne des résultats compatibles avec les expériences de friction classique. En dimension finie (2D), les événements touchant l'ensemble du système (trouvés en champ moyen) deviennent localisés, et les simulations numériques donnent des résultats en bon accord avec plusieurs caractéristiques importantes des tremblements de terre, tant qualitativement que quantitativement. Le second système incluant également une forme très simple de relaxation est un modèle jouet d'avalanche : c'est la percolation dirigée. Dans notre étude d'une variante non-markovienne de la percolation dirigée, nous avons observé que la classe d'universalité était modifiée mais seulement partiellement. En particulier, un exposant change de valeur tandis que plusieurs relations d'échelle sont préservées. Cette idée d'une classe d'universalité étendue, obtenue par l'ajout d'une perturbation non-markovienne offre des perspectives prometteuses pour notre premier système. / Many complex systems respond to a continuous input of energy by an accumulation of stress over time, interrupted by sudden energy releases called avalanches. Recently, it has been pointed out that several basic features of avalanche dynamics are induced at the microscopic level by relaxation processes, which are neglected by most models. During my thesis, I studied two well-known models of avalanche dynamics, modified minimally by the inclusion of some forms of relaxation. The first system is that of a viscoelastic interface driven in a disordered medium. In mean-field, we prove that the interface has a periodic behaviour (with a new, emerging time scale), with avalanche events that span the whole system. We compute semi-analytically the friction force acting on this surface, and find that it is compatible with classical friction experiments. In finite dimensions (2D), the mean-field system-sized events become local, and numerical simulations give qualitative and quantitative results in good agreement with several important features of real earthquakes. The second system including a minimal form of relaxation consists in a toy model of avalanches: the Directed Percolation process. In our study of a non-Markovian variant of Directed Percolation, we observed that the universality class was modified but not completely. In particular, in the non-Markov case an exponent changes of value while several scaling relations still hold. This picture of an extended universality class obtained by the addition of a non-Markovian perturbation to the dynamics provides promising prospects for our first system.