  We use record dynamics (RD), a coarse-grained description of the ubiquitous
relaxation phenomenology known as "aging", as a diagnostic tool to find
universal features that distinguish between the energy landscapes of Ising spin
models and the ferromagnet. According to RD, a non-equilibrium system after a
quench relies on fluctuations that randomly generate a sequence of irreversible
record-sized events (quakes or avalanches) that allow the system to escape
ever-higher barriers of meta-stable states within a complex, hierarchical
energy landscape. Once these record events allow the system to overcome such
barriers, the system relaxes by tumbling into the following meta-stable state
that is marginally more stable. Within this framework, a clear distinction can
be drawn between the coarsening dynamics of an Ising ferromagnet and the aging
of the spin glass, which are often put in the same category. To that end, we
interpolate between the spin glass and ferromagnet by varying the admixture $p$
of ferromagnetic over anti-ferromagnetic bonds from the glassy state (at 50%
each) to wherever clear ferromagnetic behavior emerges. The accumulation of
record events grows logarithmic with time in the glassy regime, with a sharp
transition at a specific admixture into the ferromagnetic regime where such
activations saturate quickly. We show this effect both for the Edwards-Anderson
model on a cubic lattice as well as the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick (mean-field)
spin glass. While this transition coincides with a previously observed
zero-temperature equilibrium transition in the former, that transition has not
yet been described for the latter.
