Optimization

Finding the ground state of a spin glass is an example of an optimization problem, i.e.

Find the minimum (or maximum) value of a cost function for all possible states s.

For the Ising spin glass, the cost function is the energy, and the states are all possible configurations of an N site lattice.

Kirkpatrick et al. realized that the method of simulated annealing that they were using for finding ground states in spin models could be generalized to solving arbitrary optimization problems by associating the cost function with the energy, and introducing a fictitious temperature.