Critical behavior of short range Potts glasses

We study by means of Monte Carlo simulations and the numerical transfer matrix technique the critical behavior of the short rangep=3 state Potts glass model in dimensionsd=2,3,4 with both Gaussian and bimodal (±J) nearest neighbor interactions on hypercubic lattices employing finite size scaling ideas. Ind=2 in addition the degeneracy of the glass ground state is computed as a function of the number of Potts states forp=3, 4, 5 and compared to that of the antiferromagnetic ground state. Our data indicate a transition into a glass phase atT=0 ind=2 with an algebraic singularity, aT=0 transition ind=3 with an essential singularity of the form exp(const.T ^–2), and an algebraic singularity atT0.25 ind=4. We conclude that the lower critical dimension of the present model isd _c =3 or very close to it. Some of the critical exponents are estimated and their respective values discussed.