Eur. Phys. J. B 1, 205-208 (1998)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s100510050172

Broad histogram Monte Carlo

¹ Instituto de Física, Universidade Federal Fluminense, av. Litorânea s/n, Boa Viagem, Niterói RJ, Brazil 24210-340
² ICA 1, Universität Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 27, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany

Corresponding author: ^a pmco@if.uff.br

Received: 8 August 1997
Revised: 11 August 1997
Accepted: 30 October 1997
Published online: 15 January 1998

Abstract

We propose a new Monte Carlo technique in which the degeneracy of energy states is obtained with a Markovian process analogous to that of Metropolis used currently in canonical simulations. The obtained histograms are much broader than those of the canonical histogram technique studied by Ferrenberg and Swendsen. Thus we can reliably reconstruct thermodynamic functions over a much larger temperature scale also away from the critical point. We show for the two-dimensional Ising model how our new method reproduces exact results more accurately and using less computer time than the conventional histogram method. We also show data in three dimensions for the Ising ferromagnet and the Edwards Anderson spin glass.