Slow relaxation dynamics – from spin glasses to stochastic optimization Original Research Article

Metastable systems such as spin glasses show a wealth of interesting relaxation phenomena. Stochastic optimization procedures such as simulated annealing help to solve a number of industrially important minimization problems. Here we show that the two fields are intimately connected by the thermally activated relaxation dynamics of complex energy landscapes. The numerical as well as the analytical tools to analyze it are discussed. Finally two applications, aging phenomena in spin glasses and adaptive simulated annealing procedures, are presented.