Elementary excitations and the phase transition in the bimodal Ising spin glass model

We show how the nature of the phase transition in the two-dimensional bimodal Ising spin glass model can be understood in terms of elementary excitations. Although the energy gap with the ground state is expected to be 4 J in the ferromagnetic phase, a gap 2 J is in fact found if the finite lattice is wound around a cylinder of odd circumference L . This 2 J gap is really a finite size effect that should not occur in the thermodynamic limit of the ferromagnet. The spatial influence of the frustration must be limited and not wrap around the system if L is large enough. In essence, the absence of 2 J excitations defines the ferromagnetic phase without recourse to calculating the magnetization or investigating the system response to domain wall defects. This study directly investigates the response to temperature. We also estimate the defect concentration where the phase transition to the spin glass state occurs. The value p c = 0.1045(11) is in reasonable agreement with the literature.