In a recent Letter [Europhys. Lett. 40, 429 (1997)], Hartmann presented
results for the structure of the degenerate ground states of the
three-dimensional +/- J spin glass model obtained using a genetic algorithm. In
this Comment, I argue that the method does not produce the correct
thermodynamic distribution of ground states and therefore gives erroneous
results for the overlap distribution. I present results of simulated annealing
calculations using different annealing rates for cubic lattices with
N=4*4*4spins. The disorder-averaged overlap distribution exhibits a significant
dependence on the annealing rate, even when the energy has converged. For fast
annealing, moments of the distribution are similar to those presented by
Hartmann. However, as the annealing rate is lowered, they approach the results
previously obtained using a multi-canonical Monte Carlo method. This shows
explicitly that care must be taken not only to reach states with the lowest
energy but also to ensure that they obey the correct thermodynamic
distribution, i.e., that the probability is the same for reaching any of the
ground states.Comment: 2 pages, Revtex, 1 PostScript figur