Tethered Monte Carlo: Managing Rugged Free-Energy Landscapes with a Helmholtz-Potential Formalism

Martin-Mayor, V. ; Seoane, B. ; Yllanes, D.

Resumen: Tethering methods allow us to perform Monte Carlo simulations in ensembles with conserved quantities. Specifically, one couples a reservoir to the physical magnitude of interest, and studies the statistical ensemble where the total magnitude (system+reservoir) is conserved. The reservoir is actually integrated out, which leaves us with a fluctuation-dissipation formalism that allows us to recover the appropriate Helmholtz effective potential with great accuracy. These methods are demonstrating a remarkable flexibility. In fact, we illustrate two very different applications: hard spheres crystallization and the phase transition of the diluted antiferromagnet in a field (the physical realization of the random field Ising model). The tethered approach holds the promise to transform cartoon drawings of corrugated free-energy landscapes into real computations. Besides, it reduces the algorithmic dynamic slowing-down, probably because the conservation law holds non-locally.

Idioma: Inglés

DOI: 10.1007/s10955-011-0261-4

Año: 2011

Publicado en: JOURNAL OF STATISTICAL PHYSICS 144, 3 (2011), 554-596
ISSN: 0022-4715

Factor impacto JCR: 1.397 (2011)

Categ. JCR: PHYSICS, MATHEMATICAL rank: 20 / 55 = 0.364 (2011) - Q2 - T2

Financiación: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MICINN/FIS2009-12648-C03-02

Tipo y forma: Artículo (PostPrint)