The structure of enumerated spin glass state spaces Original Research Article

We enumerate the low energy part of the state space of an Ising spin glass using an efficient branch-and-bound algorithm. A coarse graining algorithm (NB-clustering) is employed to condense the inherent information to a system size which is treatable in computer simulations. The reduced state space still incorporates all ingredients necessary to simulate aging effects. We investigate its structure in detail and find that certain assumptions made in heuristical state space models which have been presented in the past to reproduce aging phenomena in spin glass experiments are indeed compatible with the data from the observed state spaces.