Optimal Energy Estimation in Path-Integral Monte Carlo Simulations

Abstract

We investigate the properties of two standard energy estimators used in path-integral Monte Carlo simulations. By disentangling the variance of the estimators and their autocorrelation times we analyse the dependence of the performance on the update algorithm and present a detailed comparison of refined update schemes such as multigrid and staging techniques. We show that a proper combination of the two estimators leads to a further reduction of the statistical error of the estimated energy with respect to the better of the two without extra cost.

45 pp. LaTeX, 22 Postscript Figures

References in corpus (4)

• Application of Multicanonical Multigrid Monte Carlo Method to the Two-Dimensional ${\varphi }^4$-Model: Autocorrelations and Interface Tension
• Multicanonical Multigrid Monte Carlo
• Multigrid Method versus Staging Algorithm for PIMC Simulations
• Test of variational approximation for $ph{i}^4$ quantum chain by Monte Carlo simulation

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