We review our earlier studies on the order parameter distribution of the quantum Sherrington-Kirkpatrick (SK) model. Through Monte Carlo technique, we investigate the behavior of the order parameter distribution at finite temperatures. The zero temperature study of the spin glass order parameter distribution is made by the exact diagonalization method. We find in low-temperature (high-transverse-field) spin glass region, the tail (extended up to zero value of order parameter) and width of the order parameter distribution become zero in thermodynamic limit. Such observations clearly suggest the existence of a low-temperature (high-transverse-field) ergodic region. We also find in high-temperature (low-transverse-field) spin glass phase the order parameter distribution has nonzero value for all values of the order parameter even in infinite system size limit, which essentially indicates the nonergodic behavior of the system. We study the annealing dynamics by the paths which pass through both ergodic and nonergodic spin glass regions. We find the average annealing time becomes system size independent for the paths which pass through the quantum-fluctuation-dominated ergodic spin glass region. In contrast to that, the annealing time becomes strongly system size dependent for annealing down through the classical-fluctuation-dominated nonergodic spin glass region. We investigate the behavior of the spin autocorrelation in the spin glass phase. We observe that the decay rate of autocorrelation towards its equilibrium value is much faster in the ergodic region with respect to the nonergodic region of the spin glass phase.
We review our earlier studies on the order parameter distribution of the quantum Sherrington-Kirkpatrick (SK) model. Through Monte Carlo technique, we investigate the behavior of the order parameter distribution at finite temperatures. The zero temperature study of the spin glass order parameter distribution is made by the exact diagonalization method. We find in low-temperature (high-transverse-field) spin glass region, the tail (extended up to zero value of order parameter) and width of the order parameter distribution become zero in thermodynamic limit. Such observations clearly suggest the existence of a low-temperature (high-transverse-field) ergodic region. We also find in high-temperature (low-transverse-field) spin glass phase the order parameter distribution has nonzero value for all values of the order parameter even in infinite system size limit, which essentially indicates the nonergodic behavior of the system. We study the annealing dynamics by the paths which pass through both ergodic and nonergodic spin glass regions. We find the average annealing time becomes system size independent for the paths which pass through the quantum-fluctuation-dominated ergodic spin glass region. In contrast to that, the annealing time becomes strongly system size dependent for annealing down through the classical-fluctuation-dominated nonergodic spin glass region. We investigate the behavior of the spin autocorrelation in the spin glass phase. We observe that the decay rate of autocorrelation towards its equilibrium value is much faster in the ergodic region with respect to the nonergodic region of the spin glass phase.
We explore the behavior of the order parameter distribution of the quantum Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model in the spin glass phase using Monte Carlo technique for the effective Suzuki-Trotter Hamiltonian at finite temperatures and that at zero temperature obtained using the exact diagonalization method. Our numerical results indicate the existence of a low- but finite-temperature quantum-fluctuation-dominated ergodic region along with the classical fluctuation-dominated high-temperature nonergodic region in the spin glass phase of the model. In the ergodic region, the order parameter distribution gets narrower around the most probable value of the order parameter as the system size increases. In the other region, the Parisi order distribution function has nonvanishing value everywhere in the thermodynamic limit, indicating nonergodicity. We also show that the average annealing time for convergence (to a low-energy level of the model, within a small error range) becomes system size independent for annealing down through the (quantum-fluctuation-dominated) ergodic region. It becomes strongly system size dependent for annealing through the nonergodic region. Possible finite-size scaling-type behavior for the extent of the ergodic region is also addressed.
We first review, following our earlier studies, the critical behavior of the quantum Sherrington-Kirkpatrick (SK) model at finite as well as at zero temperatures. Through the analysis of the Binder cumulant we determined the entire phase diagram of the model and from the scaling analysis of the numerical data we obtained the correlation length exponent. For both the critical Binder cumulant and the correlation length exponent, we observed a crossover from classical- to quantum-fluctuation-dominated values at a finite temperature. We studied the behavior of the order parameter distribution of the model in the glass phase (at finite and zero temperatures). Along with a classical-fluctuation-dominated nonergodic region (where the replica symmetry is broken), we also found a quantum-fluctuation-dominated low-temperature ergodic region in the spin glass phase. In this quantum-fluctuation-dominated region, the order parameter distribution has a narrow peak around its most probable value, eventually becoming a delta function in the infinite-system-size limit (indicating replica symmetry restoration or ergodicity in the system). We also found that the annealing time (to reach a very low energy level of the classical SK model) becomes practically system-size-independent when the annealing paths pass through this ergodic region. In contrast, when such paths pass through the nonergodic region, the convergence time grows rapidly with the system size. We present a new study of the autocorrelation of the spins in both ergodic and nonergodic regions. We found a significant increase in the relaxation time (and also a change in the relaxation behavior) in the classical-fluctuation-dominated (nonergodic) region compared with that in the quantum-fluctuation-dominated (ergodic) region of the spin glass phase.
We review the numerical studies on the critical behaviour of the quantum Sherrington-Kirkpatrick (SK) spin glass model, which indicate that a quantum critical behaviour is observed up to a low but non-zero value of temperature. We revisit the numerical investigations on the spin glass order parameter distributions, which identify a low temperature along with high transverse field spin glass phase where the order parameter distribution becomes a delta function in the thermodynamic limit indicating the restoration of replica symmetry and ergodic nature of the system. In the remaining spin glass phase associated with high temperature and low transverse field, the observed distribution is broad akin to the Parisi order parameter distribution. This essentially indicates the non-ergodic behaviour of the system. We further discuss the annealing dynamics studies on the quantum SK model. Such investigations reveal the system size independence of annealing time when the annealing paths go through the ergodic spin glass region. Interestingly, when such dynamics are performed in the non-ergodic spin glass phase the annealing time becomes an increasing function of the system size. Spin autocorrelation shows faster relaxation in the ergodic spin glass region compared with that found in the non-ergodic spin glass region. This article is part of the theme issue 'Quantum annealing and computation: challenges and perspectives'.
We propose and demonstrate numerically a fast classical annealing scheme for the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick (SK) spin glass model, employing the Suzuki-Kubo mean-field Ising dynamics (supplemented by a modified Thouless-Anderson-Palmer reaction field). The resultant dynamics, starting from any arbitrary paramagnetic phase (with local magnetizations m_{i}=±1, for the ith spin, and the global magnetization m=0), takes the system quickly to an appropriate state with small local values of magnetization (m_{i}) commensurate with the (frustrated) interactions. As the temperature decreases with the annealing, the configuration practically remains (in an effective adiabatic way) close to a low-energy configuration as the magnitudes of m_{i}'s and the spin glass order parameter q grow to unity. While the configuration reached by the procedure is not the ground state, for an N-spin SK model (with N up to 10 000), the deviation in the energy per spin E_{N}^{0}-E^{0} found by the annealing procedure scales as N^{-2/3}, with E^{0}=-0.7629±0.0002, suggesting that in the thermodynamic limit the energy per spin of the low-energy configurations converges to the ground state of the SK model (analytical estimate being E^{0}=-0.7631667265⋯), fluctuation σ_{N} in E_{N}^{0} decreases as ∼N^{-3/4}, and the annealing time τ_{N}∼N, making this protocol highly efficient in estimating the ground state energy of the SK model.
I study in detail the quantum Sherrington-Kirkpatrick (SK) model, i.e., the infinite-range Ising spin glass in a transverse field, by solving numerically the effective one-dimensional model that the quantum SK model can be mapped to in the thermodynamic limit. I find that the replica symmetric solution is unstable down to zero temperature, in contrast to some previous claims, and so there is not only a line of transitions in the (longitudinal) field-temperature plane (the de Almeida-Thouless, AT, line) where replica symmetry is broken, but also a quantum de Almeida-Thouless (QuAT) line in the transverse field-longitudinal field plane at T=0. If the QuAT line also occurs in models with short-range interactions its presence might affect the performance of quantum annealers when solving spin glass-type problems with a bias (i.e., magnetic field).
A promising approach to solving hard binary optimization problems is quantum adiabatic annealing in a transverse magnetic field. An instantaneous ground state-initially a symmetric superposition of all possible assignments of N qubits-is closely tracked as it becomes more and more localized near the global minimum of the classical energy. Regions where the energy gap to excited states is small (for instance at the phase transition) are the algorithm's bottlenecks. Here I show how for large problems the complexity becomes dominated by O(log N) bottlenecks inside the spin-glass phase, where the gap scales as a stretched exponential. For smaller N, only the gap at the critical point is relevant, where it scales polynomially, as long as the phase transition is second order. This phenomenon is demonstrated rigorously for the two-pattern Gaussian Hopfield model. Qualitative comparison with the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model leads to similar conclusions.