Volume 12, Issue 5
Parallel Tempering Simulation on Generalized Canonical Ensemble
10.4208/cicp.120811.200112a

Commun. Comput. Phys., 12 (2012), pp. 1293-1306.

• Abstract

Parallel tempering simulation is widely used in enhanced sampling of systems with complex energy surfaces. We hereby introduce generalized canonical ensemble (GCE) instead of the usual canonical ensemble into the parallel tempering to further improve abilities of the simulation technique. GCE utilizes an adapted weight function to obtain a unimodal energy distribution even in phase-coexisting region and then the parallel tempering on GCE yields the steady swap acceptance rates (SARs) instead of the ﬂuctuated SARs in that on canonical ensemble. With the steady SARs, we can facilitate assign the parameters of the parallel tempering simulation to more efﬁciently reachequilibrium among differentphases. We illustrate the parallel tempering simulation on GCE in the phase-coexisting region of 2-dimensional Potts model, a benchmark system for new simulation method developing. The result indicates that the new parallel tempering method is more efﬁcient to estimate statistical quantities (i.e., to sample the conformational space) than the normal parallel tempering, specially in phase-coexisting regions of larger systems.

• History

Published online: 2012-12

• Keywords