Search

We study the chaotic behavior of the Gibbs state of spin-glasses under the application of an external magnetic field, in the crossover region where the field intensity scales proportional to $1/\sqrt{N}$, being $N$ the system size. We show that Replica Symmetry Breaking (RSB) theory provides universal predictions for chaotic behavior: they depend only on the zero-field overlap probability function $P(q)$ and are independent of other features of the system. Using solely $P(q)$ as input we can analytically predict quantitatively the statistics of the states in a small field. In the infinite volume limit, each spin-glass sample is characterized by an infinite number of states that have a tree-like structure. We generate the corresponding probability distribution through efficient sampling using a representation based on the Bolthausen-Sznitman coalescent. In this way, we can compute quantitatively properties in the presence of a magnetic field in the crossover region, the overlap probability distribution in the presence of a small field and the degree of decorrelation as the field is increased. To test our computations, we have simulated the Bethe lattice spin glass and the 4D Edwards-Anderson model, finding in both cases excellent agreement with the universal predictions., Comment: New version with modifications included after the review process and publication. 17 pages, 13 figures

We release a set of GPU programs for the study of the Quantum ($S=1/2$) Spin Glass on a square lattice, with binary couplings. The library contains two main codes: MCQSG (that carries out Monte Carlo simulations using both the Metropolis and the Parallel Tempering algorithms, for the problem formulated in the Trotter-Suzuki approximation), and EDQSG (that obtains the extremal eigenvalues of the Transfer Matrix using the Lanczos algorithm). EDQSG has allowed us to diagonalize transfer matrices with size up to $2^{36}\times2^{36}$. From its side, MCQSG running on four NVIDIA A100 cards delivers a sub-picosecond time per spin-update, a performance that is competitive with dedicated hardware. We include as well in our library GPU programs for the analysis of the spin configurations generated by MCQSG. Finally, we provide two auxiliary codes: the first generates the lookup tables employed by the random number generator of MCQSG; the second one simplifies the execution of multiple runs using different input data., Comment: Code available in the Computer Physics Communications repository

Quantum annealers are commercial devices aiming to solve very hard computational problems named spin glasses. Just like in metallurgic annealing one slowly cools a ferrous metal, quantum annealers seek good solutions by slowly removing the transverse magnetic field at the lowest possible temperature. The field removal diminishes quantum fluctuations but forces the system to traverse the critical point that separates the disordered phase (at large fields) from the spin-glass phase (at small fields). A full understanding of this phase transition is still missing. A debated, crucial question regards the closing of the energy gap separating the ground state from the first excited state. All hopes of achieving an exponential speed-up, as compared to classical computers, rest on the assumption that the gap will close algebraically with the number of qspins, but renormalization group calculations predict that the closing will be instead exponential. Here we solve this debate through extreme-scale numerical simulations, finding that both parties grasped parts of the truth. While the closing of the gap at the critical point is indeed super-algebraic, it remains algebraic if one restricts the symmetry of possible excitations. Since this symmetry restriction is experimentally achievable (at least nominally), there is still hope for the Quantum Annealing paradigm.

Many systems, when initially placed far from equilibrium, exhibit surprising behavior in their attempt to equilibrate. Striking examples are the Mpemba effect and the cooling-heating asymmetry. These anomalous behaviors can be exploited to shorten the time needed to cool down (or heat up) a system. Though, a strategy to design these effects in mesoscopic systems is missing. We bring forward a description that allows us to formulate such strategies, and, along the way, makes natural these paradoxical behaviors. In particular, we study the evolution of macroscopic physical observables of systems freely relaxing under the influence of one or two instantaneous thermal quenches. The two crucial ingredients in our approach are timescale separation and a nonmonotonic temperature evolution of an important state function. We argue that both are generic features near a first-order transition. Our theory is exemplified with the one-dimensional Ising model in a magnetic field using analytic results and numerical experiments., Comment: pdflatex. Main text (6pp + 5 pdf figures) + Supplemental Material (7pp + 5 pdf figures). Some minor changes w.r.t. v1. Final version

Finite-size scaling above the upper critical dimension is a long-standing puzzle in the field of Statistical Physics. Even for pure systems various scaling theories have been suggested, partially corroborated by numerical simulations. In the present manuscript we address this problem in the even more complicated case of disordered systems. In particular, we investigate the scaling behavior of the random-field Ising model at dimension $D = 7$, i.e., above its upper critical dimension $D_{\rm u} = 6$, by employing extensive ground-state numerical simulations. Our results confirm the hypothesis that at dimensions $D > D_{\rm u}$, linear length scale $L$ should be replaced in finite-size scaling expressions by the effective scale $L_{\rm eff} = L^{D / D_{\rm u}}$. Via a fitted version of the quotients method that takes this modification, but also subleading scaling corrections into account, we compute the critical point of the transition for Gaussian random fields and provide estimates for the full set of critical exponents. Thus, our analysis indicates that this modified version of finite-size scaling is successful also in the context of the random-field problem., Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, Appendix included, version published in Phys. Rev. E

The very existence of a phase transition for spin glasses in an external magnetic field is controversial, even in high dimensions. We carry out massive simulations of the Ising spin-glass in a field, in six dimensions (which, according to classical -- but not generally accepted -- field-theoretical studies, is the upper critical dimension). We obtain results compatible with a second-order phase transition and estimate its critical exponents for the simulated lattice sizes. The detailed analysis performed by other authors of the replica symmetric Hamiltonian, under the hypothesis of critical behavior, predicts that the ratio of the renormalized coupling constants remain bounded as the correlation length grows. Our numerical results are in agreement with this expectation., Comment: 17 pages, 12 figures

Cooling and heating faster a system is a crucial problem in science, technology and industry. Indeed, choosing the best thermal protocol to reach a desired temperature or energy is not a trivial task. Noticeably, we find that the phase transitions may speed up thermalization in systems where there are no conserved quantities. In particular, we show that the slow growth of magnetic domains shortens the overall time that the system takes to reach a final desired state. To prove that statement, we use intensive numerical simulations of a prototypical many-body system, namely the 2D Ising model., Comment: The document contains the paper (pdflatex, 11 pages), and 12 pdf figures. Final version to be published

We present a complementary estimation of the critical exponent $\alpha$ of the specific heat of the 5D random-field Ising model from zero-temperature numerical simulations. Our result $\alpha = 0.12(2)$ is consistent with the estimation coming from the modified hyperscaling relation and provides additional evidence in favor of the recently proposed restoration of dimensional reduction in the random-field Ising model at $D = 5$., Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, final version with minor corrections

We explore the capacity of neural networks to detect a symmetry with complex local and non-local patterns : the gauge symmetry Z 2 . This symmetry is present in physical problems from topological transitions to QCD, and controls the computational hardness of instances of spin-glasses. Here, we show how to design a neural network, and a dataset, able to learn this symmetry and to find compressed latent representations of the gauge orbits. Our method pays special attention to system-wrapping loops, the so-called Polyakov loops, known to be particularly relevant for computational complexity., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures + appendices

We provide a non-trivial test of supersymmetry in the random-field Ising model at five spatial dimensions, by means of extensive zero-temperature numerical simulations. Indeed, supersymmetry relates correlation functions in a D-dimensional disordered system with some other correlation functions in a D-2 clean system. We first show how to check these relationships in a finite-size scaling calculation, and then perform a high-accuracy test. While the supersymmetric predictions are satisfied even to our high-accuracy at D=5, they fail to describe our results at D=4., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, final version with minor modifications to be published in Physical Review Letters

We study energy landscape and dynamics of the three-dimensional Heisenberg Spin Glass model in the paramagnetic phase, i.e. for temperature $T$ larger than the critical temperature $T_\mathrm{c}$. The landscape is non-trivially related to the equilibrium states even in the high-temperature phase, and reveals an onset of non-trivial behavior at a temperature $T_\mathrm{o}$, which is also seen through the behavior of the thermoremanent magnetization. We also find a power-law growth of the relaxation times far from the spin-glass transition, indicating a dynamical crossover at a temperature $T_\mathrm{d}$, $T_\mathrm{c}

Recent technological breakthroughs have precipitated the availability of specialized devices that promise to solve NP-Hard problems faster than standard computers. These `Ising Machines' are however analog in nature and as such inevitably have implementation errors. We find that their success probability decays exponentially with problem size for a fixed error level, and we derive a sufficient scaling law for the error in order to maintain a fixed success probability. We corroborate our results with experiment and numerical simulations and discuss the practical implications of our findings., Comment: 14 pages, 15 figures. v2: Updated to published version

A lot of progress has been made recently in our understanding of the random-field Ising model thanks to large-scale numerical simulations. In particular, it has been shown that, contrary to previous statements: the critical exponents for different probability distributions of the random fields and for diluted antiferromagnets in a field are the same. Therefore, critical universality, which is a perturbative renormalization-group prediction, holds beyond the validity regime of perturbation theory. Most notably, dimensional reduction is restored at five dimensions, i.e., the exponents of the random-field Ising model at five dimensions and those of the pure Ising ferromagnet at three dimensions are the same., Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, updated and extended version, to be published in J. Stat. Phys

We present a three-dimensional Ising model where lines of equal spins are frozen in such that they form an ordered framework structure. The frame spins impose an external field on the rest of the spins (active spins). We demonstrate that this "porous Ising model" can be seen as a minimal model for condensation transitions of gas molecules in metal-organic frameworks. Using Monte Carlo simulation techniques, we compare the phase behavior of a porous Ising model with that of a particle-based model for the condensation of methane (CH$_4$) in the isoreticular metal-organic framework IRMOF-16. For both models, we find a line of first-order phase transitions that end in a critical point. We show that the critical behavior in both cases belongs to the 3D Ising universality class, in contrast to other phase transitions in confinement such as capillary condensation., Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures

Physical implementations of quantum annealing unavoidably operate at finite temperatures. We point to a fundamental limitation of fixed finite temperature quantum annealers that prevents them from functioning as competitive scalable optimizers and show that to serve as optimizers annealer temperatures must be appropriately scaled down with problem size. We derive a temperature scaling law dictating that temperature must drop at the very least in a logarithmic manner but also possibly as a power law with problem size. We corroborate our results by experiment and simulations and discuss the implications of these to practical annealers., Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures. v2: Updated to published version

The debate around the potential superiority of quantum annealers over their classical counterparts has been ongoing since the inception of the field by Kadowaki and Nishimori close to two decades ago. Recent technological breakthroughs in the field, which have led to the manufacture of experimental prototypes of quantum annealing optimizers with sizes approaching the practical regime, have reignited this discussion. However, the demonstration of quantum annealing speedups remains to this day an elusive albeit coveted goal. Here, we examine the power of quantum annealers to provide a different type of quantum enhancement of practical relevance, namely, their ability to serve as useful samplers from the ground-state manifolds of combinatorial optimization problems. We study, both numerically by simulating ideal stoquastic and non-stoquastic quantum annealing processes, and experimentally, using a commercially available quantum annealing processor, the ability of quantum annealers to sample the ground-states of spin glasses differently than classical thermal samplers. We demonstrate that i) quantum annealers in general sample the ground-state manifolds of spin glasses very differently than thermal optimizers, ii) the nature of the quantum fluctuations driving the annealing process has a decisive effect on the final distribution over ground-states, and iii) the experimental quantum annealer samples ground-state manifolds significantly differently than thermal and ideal quantum annealers. We illustrate how quantum annealers may serve as powerful tools when complementing standard sampling algorithms., Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures

The random-field Ising model is one of the few disordered systems where the perturbative renormalization group can be carried out to all orders of perturbation theory. This analysis predicts dimensional reduction, i.e., that the critical properties of the random-field Ising model in $D$ dimensions are identical to those of the pure Ising ferromagnet in $D-2$ dimensions. It is well known that dimensional reduction is not true in three dimensions, thus invalidating the perturbative renormalization group prediction. Here, we report high-precision numerical simulations of the 5D random-field Ising model at zero temperature. We illustrate universality by comparing different probability distributions for the random fields. We compute all the relevant critical exponents (including the critical slowing down exponent for the ground-state finding algorithm), as well as several other renormalization-group invariants. The estimated values of the critical exponents of the 5D random-field Ising model are statistically compatible to those of the pure 3D Ising ferromagnet. These results support the restoration of dimensional reduction at $D = 5$. We thus conclude that the failure of the perturbative renormalization group is a low-dimensional phenomenon. We close our contribution by comparing universal quantities for the random-field problem at dimensions $3 \leq D < 6$ to their values in the pure Ising model at $D-2$ dimensions and we provide a clear verification of the Rushbrooke equality at all studied dimensions., Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables, version to be published in Phys. Rev. E

By performing a high-statistics simulation of the $D=4$ random-field Ising model at zero temperature for different shapes of the random-field distribution, we show that the model is ruled by a single universality class. We compute to a high accuracy the complete set of critical exponents for this class, including the correction-to-scaling exponent. Our results indicate that in four dimensions: (i) dimensional reduction as predicted by the perturbative renormalization group does not hold and (ii) three independent critical exponents are needed to described the transition., Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, 1 table ; supplemental material appended at the end ; version to be published in Phys. Rev. Lett

Recent technological developments in the field of experimental quantum annealing have made prototypical annealing optimizers with hundreds of qubits commercially available. The experimental demonstration of a quantum speedup for optimization problems has since then become a coveted, albeit elusive goal. Recent studies have shown that the so far inconclusive results, regarding a quantum enhancement, may have been partly due to the benchmark problems used being unsuitable. In particular, these problems had inherently too simple a structure, allowing for both traditional resources and quantum annealers to solve them with no special efforts. The need therefore has arisen for the generation of harder benchmarks which would hopefully possess the discriminative power to separate classical scaling of performance with size, from quantum. We introduce here a practical technique for the engineering of extremely hard spin glass Ising-type problem instances that does not require `cherry picking' from large ensembles of randomly generated instances. We accomplish this by treating the generation of hard optimization problems itself as an optimization problem, for which we offer a heuristic algorithm that solves it. We demonstrate the genuine thermal hardness of our generated instances by examining them thermodynamically and analyzing their energy landscapes, as well as by testing the performance of various state-of-the art algorithms on them. We argue that a proper characterization of the generated instances offers a practical, efficient way to properly benchmark experimental quantum annealers, as well as any other optimization algorithm., Comment: 8 pages plus appendix. 6+2 figures. Comments for v2: Fixed mistake in online title. Changed one sentence in abstract slightly, for better readability. Extended Sec. IIA, IV (final paragraph only), VI, based on referee comments. Updated References (removed duplicates, added footnote). Modified figure font sizing for readability

It was recently shown [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 110}, 227201 (2013)] that the critical behavior of the random-field Ising model in three dimensions is ruled by a single universality class. This conclusion was reached only after a proper taming of the large scaling corrections of the model by applying a combined approach of various techniques, coming from the zero- and positive-temperature toolboxes of statistical physics. In the present contribution we provide a detailed description of this combined scheme, explaining in detail the zero-temperature numerical scheme and developing the generalized fluctuation-dissipation formula that allowed us to compute connected and disconnected correlation functions of the model. We discuss the error evolution of our method and we illustrate the infinite limit-size extrapolation of several observables within phenomenological renormalization. We present an extension of the quotients method that allows us to obtain estimates of the critical exponent $\alpha$ of the specific heat of the model via the scaling of the bond energy and we discuss the self-averaging properties of the system and the algorithmic aspects of the maximum-flow algorithm used., Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures, 2 tables, final version to be published in Phys. Rev. E

In the three-dimensional Heisenberg spin glass in a random field we study the properties of the inherent structures that are obtained by an instantaneous cooling from infinite temperature. For not too large field the density of states $g(\omega)$ develops localized soft {\em plastic} modes and reaches zero as $\omega^4$ (for large fiels a gap appears). When we perturb the system adding a force along the softest mode one reaches very similar minima of the energy, separated by small barriers, that appear to be good candidates for classical two-level systems., Comment: 13 pages, 14 figures. Version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Lett

Recent advances in quantum technology have led to the development and manufacturing of experimental programmable quantum annealing optimizers that contain hundreds of quantum bits. These optimizers, named `D-Wave' chips, promise to solve practical optimization problems potentially faster than conventional `classical' computers. Attempts to quantify the quantum nature of these chips have been met with both excitement and skepticism but have also brought up numerous fundamental questions pertaining to the distinguishability of quantum annealers from their classical thermal counterparts. Here, we propose a general method aimed at answering these, and apply it to experimentally study the D-Wave chip. Inspired by spin-glass theory, we generate optimization problems with a wide spectrum of `classical hardness', which we also define. By investigating the chip's response to classical hardness, we surprisingly find that the chip's performance scales unfavorably as compared to several analogous classical algorithms. We detect, quantify and discuss purely classical effects that possibly mask the quantum behavior of the chip., Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures

The statics-dynamics correspondence in spin glasses relate non-equilibrium results on large samples (the experimental realm) with equilibrium quantities computed on small systems (the typical arena for theoretical computations). Here we employ statics-dynamics equivalence to study the Ising spin-glass critical behavior in three dimensions. By means of Monte Carlo simulation, we follow the growth of the coherence length (the size of the glassy domains), on lattices too large to be thermalized. Thanks to the large coherence lengths we reach, we are able to obtain accurate results in excellent agreement with the best available equilibrium computations. To do so, we need to clarify the several physical meanings of the dynamic exponent close to the critical temperature., Comment: Version to appear in Physical Review B

We solve a long-standing puzzle in Statistical Mechanics of disordered systems. By performing a high-statistics simulation of the D=3 random-field Ising model at zero temperature for different shapes of the random-field distribution, we show that the model is ruled by a single universality class. We compute the complete set of critical exponents for this class, including the correction-to-scaling exponent, and we show, to high numerical accuracy, that scaling is described by two independent exponents. Discrepancies with previous works are explained in terms of strong scaling corrections., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, 4 tables. Version to be published in Phys. Rev. Lett. Appendices contain Supplemental Material

We study the problem of ensemble equivalence in spin systems with short-range interactions under the existence of a first-order phase transition. The spherical model with nonlinear nearest-neighbour interactions is solved exactly both for canonical and microcanonical ensembles. The result reveals apparent ensemble inequivalence at the first-order transition point in the sense that the microcanonical entropy is non-concave as a function of the energy and consequently the specific heat is negative. In order to resolve the paradox, we show that an unconventional saddle point should be chosen in the microcanonical calculation that represents a phase separation. The XY model with non-linear interactions is also studied by microcanonical Monte Carlo simulations in two dimensions to see how this model behaves in comparison with the spherical model., Comment: 17 pages, 19 figures, revised version

We propose a cluster simulation algorithm for statistical ensembles with fixed order parameter. We use the tethered ensemble, which features Helmholtz's effective potential rather than Gibbs's free energy, and in which canonical averages are recovered with arbitrary accuracy. For the D = 2,3 Ising model our method's critical slowing down is comparable to that of canonical cluster algorithms. Yet, we can do more than merely reproduce canonical values. As an example, we obtain a competitive value for the 3D Ising anomalous dimension from the maxima of the effective potential., Comment: 4 pages, 2 color figures. Minor improvements and update of table 3

We perform a large-scale Monte Carlo simulation of the three-dimensional Ising model on simple cubic lattices of size L^3 with L=128 and 256. We determine the corresponding structure factor (Fourier transform of the two-point function) and compare it with several approximations and with experimental results. We also compute the turbidity as a function of the momentum of the incoming radiation, focusing in particular on the deviations from the Ornstein-Zernicke expression of Puglielli and Ford., Comment: 16 pages