MULTICANONICAL ALGORITHMS FOR 1ST ORDER PHASE-TRANSITIONS

BERG BA, Neuhaus T. MULTICANONICAL ALGORITHMS FOR 1ST ORDER PHASE-TRANSITIONS. PHYSICS LETTERS B. 1991;267(2):249-253.Monte Carlo simulations are discussed for systems of volume V = L(d) which undergo a first order phase transition in the finite volume limit. Conventional canonical, local Monte Carlo algorithms suffer from exponentially fast slowing down approximately V2 exp(cL(d-1)). Here we present a class of multicanonical Monte Carlo algorithms which can reduce the slowing down to a quadratic power law approximately V2