Frustration - how it can be measured

A misfit parameter is used to characterize the degree of frustration of ordered and disordered systems. It measures the increase of the ground-state energy due to frustration in comparison with that of a relevant reference state. The misfit parameter is calculated for various spin-glass models. It allows one to compare these models with each other. The extension of this concept to other combinatorial optimization problems with frustration, e.g. p-state Potts glasses, graph-partitioning problems and coloring problems is given.