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arXiv:1206.0783 · Physical Review Letters

Evidence of Non-Mean-Field-Like Low-Temperature Behavior in the Edwards-Anderson Spin-Glass Model

Burcu Yücesoy, Helmut G. Katzgraber, Jonathan L. Machta

Published Oct 23, 2012• 37 citations
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Abstract

The three-dimensional Edwards-Anderson and mean-field Sherrington-Kirkpatrick Ising spin glasses are studied via large-scale Monte Carlo simulations at low temperatures, deep within the spin-glass phase. Performing a careful statistical analysis of several thousand independent disorder realizations and using an observable that detects peaks in the overlap distribution, we show that the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick and Edwards-Anderson models have a distinctly different low-temperature behavior. The structure of the spin-glass overlap distribution for the Edwards-Anderson model suggests that its low-temperature phase has only a single pair of pure states.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.109.177204

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The three-dimensional Edwards-Anderson and mean-field Sherrington-Kirkpatrick Ising spin glasses are studied via large-scale Monte Carlo simulations at low temperatures, deep within the spin-glass phase. Performing a careful statistical analysis of several thousand independent disorder realizations and using an observable that detects peaks in the overlap distribution, we show that the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick and Edwards-Anderson models have a distinctly different low-temperature behavior. The structure of the spin-glass overlap distribution for the Edwards-Anderson model suggests that its low-temperature phase has only a single pair of pure states.
Using Monte Carlo simulations, we study in detail the overlap distribution for individual samples for several spin-glass models including the infinite-range Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model, short-range Edwards-Anderson models in three and four space dimensions, and one-dimensional long-range models with diluted power-law interactions. We study three long-range models with different powers as follows: The first is approximately equivalent to a short-range model in three dimensions, the second to a short-range model in four dimensions, and the third to a short-range model in the mean-field regime. We study an observable proposed earlier by some of us which aims to distinguish the ``replica symmetry breaking'' picture of the spin-glass phase from the ``droplet picture,'' finding that larger system sizes would be needed to unambiguously determine which of these pictures describes the low-temperature state of spin glasses best, except for the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model, which is unambiguously described by replica symmetry breaking. Finally, we also study the median integrated overlap probability distribution and a typical overlap distribution, finding that these observables are not particularly helpful in distinguishing the replica symmetry breaking and the droplet pictures.
We have simulated Edwards-Anderson (EA) as well as Sherrington-Kirkpatrick systems of L3{L}^{3}L3 spins. After averaging over large sets of EA system samples of $3\ensuremath{\le}L\ensuremath{\le}10$, we obtain accurate numbers for distributions p(q)p(q)p(q) of the overlap parameter qqq at very low-temperature TTT. We find $p(0)/T\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0.233(4)$ as $T\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0$. This is in contrast with the droplet scenario of spin glasses. We also study the number of mismatched links---between replica pairs---that come with large scale excitations. Contributions from small scale excitations are discarded. We thus obtain for the fractal dimension of outer surfaces of $q\ensuremath{\sim}0$ excitations in the EA model ${d}_{s}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}2.59(3)$ as $T\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0$. This is in contrast with ${d}_{s}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}3$ as $T\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0$ that is predicted by mean-field theory for the macroscopic limit.
A recent interesting paper [Yucesoy et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 177204 (2012), arXiv:1206:0783] compares the low-temperature phase of the 3D Edwards-Anderson (EA) model to its mean-field counterpart, the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick (SK) model. The authors study the overlap distributions P_J(q) and conclude that the two models behave differently. Here we notice that a similar analysis using state-of-the-art, larger data sets for the EA model (generated with the Janus computer) leads to a very clear interpretation of the results of Yucesoy et al., showing that the EA model behaves as predicted by the replica symmetry breaking (RSB) theory.
Spin glasses have been the subject of intense study and considerable controversy for decades, and the low-temperature phase of short-range spin glasses is still poorly understood. Our main goal is to improve our understanding in this area and find an answer to the following question: Are there only a single pair or a countable infinity of pure states in the low temperature phase of the EA spin glass? To that aim we first start by introducing spin glasses and provide a brief history of their research, then proceed to describe our method of simulation, the parallel tempering Monte Carlo algorithm. Next, we present the results of a large-scale numerical study of the equilibrium three-dimensional Edwards-Anderson Ising spin glass with Gaussian disorder. In order to understand how the parallel tempering algorithm works, we measure various static, as well as dynamical quantities, such as the autocorrelation times and round-trip times for the parallel tempering Monte Carlo method. We examine the correlation between static and dynamic observables for _ 5000 disorder realizations and up to 1000 spins down to temperatures at 20% of the critical temperature, and our results show that autocorrelation times are directly correlated with the roughness of the free-energy landscape. In the following chapters, the three- and four-dimensional Edwards-Anderson and mean-field Sherrington-Kirkpatrick Ising spin glasses are studied again via large-scale Monte Carlo simulations at low temperatures, deep within the spinglass phase. Performing a careful statistical analysis of several thousand independent disorder realizations and using an observable that detects peaks in the overlap distribution, we show that the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick and Edwards-Anderson models have a distinctly different low-temperature behavior. We arrive to the following conclusion: The structure of the spin-glass overlap distribution for the Edwards-Anderson model suggests that its low-temperature phase has only a single pair of pure states. Finally we present results for several new observables, along with a few preliminary studies and suggestions for future research.
The question of the number of thermodynamic states present in the low-temperature phase of the three-dimensional Edwards-Anderson Ising spin glass is addressed by studying spin- and link-overlap distributions using population annealing Monte Carlo simulations. We consider overlaps between systems with the same boundary condition, which are the usual quantities measured, and also overlaps between systems with different boundary conditions, both for the full systems and also within a smaller window within the system. Our results appear to be fully compatible with a single pair of pure states such as in the droplet-scaling picture. However, our results for whether or not domain walls induced by changing boundary conditions are space filling or not are also compatible with scenarios having many thermodynamic states, such as the chaotic-pairs picture and the replica-symmetry-breaking picture. The differing results for spin overlaps in the same and different boundary conditions suggest that finite-size effects are very large for the system sizes currently accessible in low-temperature simulations.