Large-scale low-energy excitations in 3-d spin glasses

Jérôme Houdayer (1) , Florent Krzakala (2) , Olivier C. Martin (2)

1 Institut für Physik [Mainz]
2 LPTMS - Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Modèles Statistiques

We numerically extract large-scale excitations above the ground state in the 3-dimensional Edwards-Anderson spin glass with Gaussian couplings. We find that associated energies are O(1), in agreement with the mean field picture. Of further interest are the position-space properties of these excitations. First, our study of their topological properties show that the majority of the large-scale excitations are sponge-like. Second, when probing their geometrical properties, we find that the excitations coarsen when the system size is increased. We conclude that either finite size effects are very large even when the spin overlap q is close to zero, or the mean field picture of homogeneous excitations has to be modified.

Domaines: Systèmes désordonnés et réseaux de neurones [cond-mat.dis-nn]

Jérôme Houdayer, Florent Krzakala, Olivier C. Martin. Large-scale low-energy excitations in 3-d spin glasses. The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, 2000, 18, pp.467-477. ⟨hal-00003676⟩