Nonequilibrium relations in spin glasses

Masayuki Ohzeki, Hidetoshi Nishimori

Published 2010-03-29, updated 2010-05-21Version 3

The applications of nonequilbrium relations such as the Jarzynski equality and the fluctuation theorem to spin glasses are considered. The spin glass is a basic platform where we consider an application of an approximate solver of combinatorial optimization problems, simulated annealing. We find a novel relationship between an average through a nonequilibrium process where the temperature changes as in simulated annealing and a thermal average in equilibrium with different amounts of quenched randomness. The results shown in the present study may serve as an alternative way to overcome critical slowing down in spin glasses. It means that this way may mitigate difficulties in several hard optimization problems.