We show that a system with competing interactions on different length scales, relevant to the formation of stripes in doped Mott insulators, undergoes a self-generated glass transition which is caused by the frustrated nature of the interactions and not related to the presence of quenched disorder. An exponentially large number of metastable configurations is found, leading to a slow, landscape dominated long time relaxation and a breakup of the system into a disordered inhomogeneous state.

• Received 15 March 2000

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.85.836