Non-equilibrium criticality and efficient exploration of glassy landscapes with memory dynamics

Spin glasses are notoriously difficult to study both analytically and numerically due to the presence of frustration and metastability. Their highly non-convex landscapes require collective updates to explore efficiently. Currently, most state-of-the-art algorithms rely on stochastic spin clusters to perform non-local updates, but such "cluster algorithms" lack general efficiency. Here, we introduce a non-equilibrium approach for simulating spin glasses based on classical dynamics with memory. By simulating various classes of 3d spin glasses (Edwards-Anderson, partially-frustrated, and fully-frustrated models), we find that memory dynamically promotes critical spin clusters during time evolution, in a self-organizing manner. This facilitates an efficient exploration of the low-temperature phases of spin glasses.