title: Improved extremal optimization for the Ising spin glass.
abstract: A version of the extremal optimization (EO) algorithm introduced by Boettcher and Percus is tested on two- and three-dimensional spin glasses with Gaussian disorder. EO preferentially flips spins that are locally "unfit"; the variant introduced here reduces the probability of flipping previously selected spins. Relative to EO, this adaptive algorithm finds exact ground states with a speedup of order 10(4) (10(2) ) for 16(2) - (8(3) -) spin samples. This speedup increases rapidly with system size, making this heuristic a useful tool in the study of materials with quenched disorder.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York 13244, USA.
authors.forename: A Alan
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Middleton