Multicanonical ensemble: A New approach to simulate first order phase transitions

Berg, B.A.; Neuhaus, T.

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.68.9

Multicanonical ensemble: A New approach to simulate first order phase transitions

B.A. Berg
(
- Bielefeld U. and
- Florida State U.
)
,
T. Neuhaus
(
- Bielefeld U. and
- Florida State U.
)

1992

4 pages

Published in:

Phys.Rev.Lett. 68 (1992) 9-12

e-Print:

hep-lat/9202004 [hep-lat]

DOI:

10.1103/PhysRevLett.68.9

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Abstract:

Relying on the recently proposed multicanonical algorithm, we present a numerical simulation of the first order phase transition in the

2d

10-state Potts model on lattices up to sizes

100\times100

. It is demonstrated that the new algorithm

lacks

an exponentially fast increase of the tunneling time between metastable states as a function of the linear size

L

of the system. Instead, the tunneling time diverges approximately proportional to

L~{2.65}

. Thus the computational effort as counted per degree of freedom for generating an independent configuration in the unstable region of the model rises proportional to

V~{2.3}

, where

V

is the volume of the system. On our largest lattice we gain more than two orders of magnitude as compared to a standard heat bath algorithm. As a first physical application we report a high precision computation of the interfacial tension.

Potts model
lattice field theory
dimension: 2
critical phenomena
tunneling: time
numerical methods: Monte Carlo