MPS-RR 2000-11
March 2000

Grand Canonical Simulations of Hard-Disk Systems by Simulated Tempering

Jesper Møller

Gunter Döge, Klaus Mecke, Dietrich Stoyan, Rasmus P. Waagepetersen

Abstract

We present the application of simulated tempering for grand canonical hard-disk systems as an efficient alternative to the commonly used Monte Carlo algorithms. This approach allows the direct study of the packing fraction as a function of the chemical potential even in the vicinity of the melting transition. Furthermore, estimates of several spatial characteristics including pair correlation function, hexagonality number, and alignment function are studied in order to test the accuracy of the method and to analyze the melting transition in hard-disk systems. We find evidence for a weak first order phase transition.

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