Y Crespo, A Laio, GE Santoro, E Tosatti,
Calculating thermodynamics properties of quantum systems by a non-Markovian Monte Carlo procedure
PHYSICAL REVIEW E, 80, 015702 (2009)
We present a history-dependent Monte Carlo scheme for the efficient calculation of the free energy of quantum systems inspired by Wang-Landau and metadynamics. In the two-dimensional quantum Ising model, chosen here for illustration, the accuracy of free energy, critical temperature, and specific heat is demonstrated as a function of simulation time and successfully compared with the best available approaches. The approach is based on a path integral formulation of the quantum problem and can be applied without modifications to quantum Hamiltonians of any level of complexity. The combination of high accuracy and performance with a much broader applicability is a major advance with respect to other available methods.