Evidence of non-mean-field-like low-temperature behavior in the Edwards-Anderson spin-glass model

B. Yucesoy, Helmut G. Katzgraber, J. Machta

Published 2012-06-04, updated 2012-10-23Version 2

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.