title: Comparing different protocols of temperature selection in the parallel tempering method.
abstract: Parallel tempering Monte Carlo simulations have been applied to a variety of systems presenting rugged free-energy landscapes. Despite this, its efficiency depends strongly on the temperature set. With this query in mind, we present a comparative study among different temperature selection schemes in three lattice-gas models. We focus our attention in the constant entropy method (CEM), proposed by Sabo et al. In the CEM, the temperature is chosen by the fixed difference of entropy between adjacent replicas. We consider a method to determine the entropy which avoids numerical integrations of the specific heat and other thermodynamic quantities. Different analyses for first- and second-order phase transitions have been undertaken, revealing that the CEM may be an useful criterion for selecting the temperatures in the parallel tempering.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Caixa Postal 19044, 81531 Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil. fiore@fisica.ufpr.br
authors.forename: Carlos E
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Fiore