Non-perturbative effects in spin glasses

We present a numerical study of an Ising spin glass with hierarchical interactions—the hierarchical Edwards-Anderson model with an external magnetic field (HEA). We study the model with Monte Carlo (MC) simulations in the mean-field (MF) and non-mean-field (NMF) regions corresponding to d ≥ 4 and d < 4 for the d-dimensional ferromagnetic Ising model respectively. We compare the MC results with those of a renormalization-group (RG) study where the critical fixed point is treated as a perturbation of the MF one, along the same lines as in the [Image: see text]-expansion for the Ising model. The MC and the RG method agree in the MF region, predicting the existence of a transition and compatible values of the critical exponents. Conversely, the two approaches markedly disagree in the NMF case, where the MC data indicates a transition, while the RG analysis predicts that no perturbative critical fixed point exists. Also, the MC estimate of the critical exponent ν in the NMF region is about twice as large as its classical value, even if the analog of the system dimension is within only ~2% from its upper-critical-dimension value. Taken together, these results indicate that the transition in the NMF region is governed by strong non-perturbative effects.