Non-Boltzmann Ensembles and Monte Carlo Simulations

Boltzmann sampling based on Metropolis algorithm has been extensively used for simulating a canonical ensemble and for calculating macroscopic properties of a closed system at desired temperatures. An estimate of a mechanical property, like energy, of an equilibrium system, is made by averaging over a large number microstates generated by Boltzmann Monte Carlo methods. This is possible because we can assign a numerical value for energy to each microstate. However, a thermal property like entropy, is not easily accessible to these methods. The reason is simple. We can not assign a numerical value for entropy, to a microstate. Entropy is not a property associated with any single microstate. It is a collective property of all the microstates. Toward calculating entropy and other thermal properties, a non-Boltzmann Monte Carlo technique called Umbrella sampling was proposed some forty years ago. Umbrella sampling has since undergone several metamorphoses and we have now, multi-canonical Monte Carlo, entropic sampling, flat histogram methods, Wang-Landau algorithm etc. This class of methods generates non-Boltzmann ensembles which are un-physical. However, physical quantities can be calculated as follows. First un-weight a microstates of the entropic ensemble; then re-weight it to the desired physical ensemble. Carry out weighted average over the entropic ensemble to estimate physical quantities. In this talk I shall tell you of the most recent nonBoltzmann Monte Carlo method and show how to calculate free energy for a few systems. We first consider estimation of free energy as a function of energy at different temperatures to characterize phase transition in an hairpin DNA in the presence of an unzipping force. Next we consider free energy as a function of order parameter and to this end we estimate density of states g(E,M), as a function of both energy E, and order parameter M . This is carried out in two stages. We estimate g(E) in the first stage. Employing g(E), we generate an entropic ensemble. In the second stage, we estimate g(E,M) by averaging g(E) over partial entropic ensemble for various values of the order parameter M . We present results on Ising spin system which exhibits second order phase transition and on a double strand DNA, which exhibits first order phase transition.