Ordering Behavior of the Two-Dimensional Ising Spin Glass with Long-Range Correlated Disorder

The standard two-dimensional Ising spin glass does not exhibit an ordered phase at finite temperature. Here, we investigate whether long-range correlated bonds change this behavior. The bonds are drawn from a Gaussian distribution with a two-point correlation for bonds at distance r that decays as $(1+r^2)^{-a/2}$, $a>0$. We study numerically with exact algorithms the ground state and domain wall excitations. Our results indicate that the inclusion of bond correlations does not lead to a spin-glass order at any finite temperature. A further analysis reveals that bond correlations have a strong effect at local length scales, inducing ferro/antiferromagnetic domains into the system. The length scale of ferro/antiferromagnetic order diverges exponentially as the correlation exponent approaches a critical value, $a \to a_c = 0$. Thus, our results suggest that the system becomes a ferro/antiferromagnet only in the limit $a \to 0$.