BOND-UPDATING MECHANISM IN CLUSTER MONTE-CARLO CALCULATIONS

We study a cluster Monte Carlo method with an adjustable parameter: the number of energy levels of a demon mediating the exchange of bond energy with the heat bath. The efficiency of the algorithm in the case of the three-dimensional Ising model is studied as a function of the number of such levels. The optimum is found in the limit of an infinite number of levels, where the method reproduces the Wolff or the Swendsen-Wang algorithm. In this limit the size distribution of flipped clusters approximates a power law more closely than that for a finite number of energy levels.