Equilibrium Microcanonical Annealing for First-Order Phase Transitions

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new framework for microcanonical annealing algorithms to simulate equilibrium systems, demonstrating their effectiveness on the 2D Potts model's first-order transition.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel framework for equilibrium microcanonical annealing algorithms, unifying simulated, population, and hybrid annealing methods for first-order phase transitions.

Findings

Algorithms perform well at first-order transitions

Simulated annealing is most efficient for studied system sizes

Framework enables diverse microcanonical simulation approaches

Abstract

A framework is presented for carrying out simulations of equilibrium systems in the microcanonical ensemble using annealing in an energy ceiling. The framework encompasses an equilibrium version of simulated annealing, population annealing and hybrid algorithms that interpolate between these extremes. These equilibrium, microcanonical annealing algorithms are applied to the thermal first-order transition in the 20-state, two-dimensional Potts model. All of these algorithms are observed to perform well at the first-order transition though for the system sizes studied here, equilibrium simulated annealing is most efficient.