A continuous-time projection quantum Monte Carlo algorithm is employed to simulate the ground state of a short-range quantum spin-glass model, namely, the two-dimensional Edwards-Anderson Hamiltonian with transverse field, featuring Gaussian nearest-neighbor couplings. We numerically demonstrate that guiding wave functions based on self-learned neural networks suppress the population control bias below modest statistical uncertainties, at least up to a hundred spins. By projecting a two-fold replicated Hamiltonian, the spin overlap is determined. A finite-size scaling analysis is performed to estimate the critical transverse field where the spin-glass transition occurs, as well as the critical exponents of the correlation length and the spin-glass susceptibility. For the latter two, good agreement is found with recent estimates from the literature for different random couplings. We also address the spin-overlap distribution within the spin-glass phase, finding that, for the workable system sizes, it displays a nontrivial double-peak shape with large weight at zero overlap.
The study of the low temperature phase of spin glass models by means of Monte Carlo simulations is a challenging task, because of the very slow dynamics and the severe finite-size effects they show. By exploiting at the best the capabilities of standard modern CPUs (especially the streaming single instruction, multiple data extensions), we have been able to simulate the four-dimensional Edwards-Anderson model with Gaussian couplings up to sizes L=70 and for times long enough to accurately measure the asymptotic behavior. By quenching systems of different sizes to the critical temperature and to temperatures in the whole low temperature phase, we have been able to identify the regime where finite-size effects are negligible: ξ(t)≲L/7. Our estimates for the dynamical exponent (z≃1/T) and for the replicon exponent (α≃1.0 and T independent), that controls the decay of the spatial correlation in the zero overlap sector, are consistent with the replica symmetry breaking theory, but the latter differs from the theoretically conjectured value.
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.
We investigate the balanced
M=4,
p=4 spin-glass model for a one-dimensional long-range proxy for the finite dimensional short-range
p-spin glass model to examine the nature of the glass transition beyond mean-field theory. We perform large-scale Monte Carlo equilibrated simulations for both fully connected and power-law diluted versions of the model. The critical temperatures extracted from the finite-size scaling (FSS) analysis of spin-glass susceptibility are in good agreement with theoretical predictions for
σ=0,0.25, and 0.55. For these values of the long-range exponent
σ (which is the power of the decrease of the interactions between the spins with their separation), one might have expected that mean-field theory would provide a good description of the system. However, the spin-overlap distribution and the value of the
λ-parameter do not provide numerical evidence for a one-step replica symmetry breaking (1RSB) phase transition. Instead, our results indicate a direct transition from the paramagnetic state to a full replica symmetry broken phase, with a renormalized value of
λ≡ω2/ω1<1 suggesting a continuous FRSB transition, despite this ratio being equal to 2 at mean-field level. A value of
λ>1 is required for the discontinuous 1RSB transition. We argue that strong finite-size effects and closely spaced transition temperatures remove the expected 1RSB transition for the system sizes which we can study. For values of the exponent
σ=0.85, which roughly corresponds to a three dimensional system, we find that the renormalized value of
λ is again less than 1, with no signs of either the 1RSB transition or the continuous FRSB transition, suggesting that the Kauzmann temperature
TK in three dimensions might be zero and the complete absence of phase transitions in structural glasses.
The performance of quantum annealing for combinatorial optimization is fundamentally limited by the minimum energy gap
Δ encountered at quantum phase transitions. We investigate the scaling of
Δ with system size
N for two paradigmatic quantum spin-glass models: the two-dimensional Edwards-Anderson (2D-EA) and the all-to-all Sherrington-Kirkpatrick (SK) models. Utilizing a newly proposed unbiased energy-gap estimator for continuous-time projection quantum Monte Carlo simulations, complemented by high-performance sparse eigenvalue solvers, we characterize the gap distributions across disorder realizations. It is found that, in the 2D-EA case, the inverse-gap distribution develops a fat tail with infinite variance as
N increases. This indicates that the unfavorable super-algebraic scaling of
Δ, recently reported for binary couplings [Nature 631, 749 (2024)], persists for the Gaussian disorder considered here, pointing to a universal feature of 2D spin glasses. Conversely, the SK model retains a finite-variance distribution, with the disorder-averaged gap following a rather slow power law, close to
Δ∝N−1/3. This finding provides a promising outlook for the potential efficiency of quantum annealers for optimization problems with dense connectivity.
The ordering of the three-dimensional isotropic
XY spin glass with nearest-neighbor random Gaussian coupling is studied by extensive Monte Carlo simulations. To investigate the ordering of the spin and the chirality, we compute several independent physical quantities including the glass order parameter, the Binder parameter, the correlation-length ratio, the overlap distribution, and the non-self-averageness parameter, etc., for both the spin-glass (SG) and the chiral-glass (CG) degrees of freedom. Evidence of spin-chirality decoupling, i.e., that the CG and SG order occur at two separate temperatures,
0<TSG<TCG, is obtained from the glass order parameter, and is fully corroborated by the Binder parameter. By contrast, the CG correlation-length ratio yields a rather pathological and inconsistent result in the range of sizes we studied, which may originate from the finite-size effect associated with a significant short-length dropoff of the spatial CG correlations. Finite-size-scaling analysis yields the CG exponents ${\ensuremath{\nu}}_{\mathrm{CG}}=1.{36}_{\ensuremath{-}0.37}^{+0.15}$ and ${\ensuremath{\eta}}_{\mathrm{CG}}=0.{26}_{\ensuremath{-}0.26}^{+0.29}$, and the SG exponents ${\ensuremath{\nu}}_{\mathrm{SG}}=1.{22}_{\ensuremath{-}0.06}^{+0.26}$ and ${\ensuremath{\eta}}_{\mathrm{SG}}=\ensuremath{-}0.{54}_{\ensuremath{-}0.52}^{+0.24}$. The exponents obtained are close to those of the Heisenberg SG, but are very different from those of the Ising SG. The chiral overlap distribution and the chiral Binder parameter exhibit the feature of a continuous one-step replica-symmetry breaking (1RSB), consistently with previous reports. Such a 1RSB feature is again like that of the Heisenberg SG, but is different from the Ising SG, which may be the cause of the difference in the CG critical properties from those of the Ising SG despite the common
Z2 symmetry.
For many real spin-glass materials, the Edwards-Anderson model with continuous-symmetry spins is more realistic than the rather better understood Ising variant. In principle, the nature of an occurring spin-glass phase in such systems might be inferred from an analysis of the zero-temperature properties. Unfortunately, with few exceptions, the problem of finding ground-state configurations is a nonpolynomial problem computationally, such that efficient approximation algorithms are called for. Here, we employ the recently developed genetic embedded matching (GEM) heuristic to investigate the nature of the zero-temperature phase of the bimodal
XY spin glass in two dimensions. We analyze bulk properties such as the asymptotic ground-state energy and the phase diagram of disorder strength vs disorder concentration. For the case of a symmetric distribution of ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic bonds, we find that the ground state of the model is unique up to a global
O(2) rotation of the spins. In particular, there are no extensive degeneracies in this model. The main focus of this work is on an investigation of the excitation spectrum as probed by changing the boundary conditions. Using appropriate finite-size scaling techniques, we consistently determine the stiffness of spin and chiral domain walls and the corresponding fractal dimensions. Most noteworthy, we find that the spin and chiral channels are characterized by two distinct stiffness exponents and, consequently, the system displays spin-chirality decoupling at large length scales. Results for the overlap distribution do not support the possibility of a multitude of thermodynamic pure states.