Exact Ground States and Active Clusters in Random Landscapes

Phillip M. Duxbury

Department of Physics and Astronomy

Michigan State University

ABSTRACT

The low temperature properties of random magnets and hard superconductors are controlled by disorder, so a complex ground state morphology is typical. The thermodynamic properties are dominated by ``active clusters'' which are thermally excited out of these complex ground states. This talk provides a survey of fast and exact methods for finding complex ground states in random landscapes and the active clusters which exist in these ground states. These methods are applied to the analysis of glassy behavior in random magnets and the depinning transition of a flux line.