A temperature-extended Jarzynski relation: Application to the numerical calculation of surface tension

Abstract

We consider a generalization of the Jarzynski relation to the case where the system interacts with a bath for which the temperature is not kept constant but can vary during the transformation. We suggest using this relation as a replacement for the thermodynamic perturbation method or the Bennett method for the estimation of order-order surface tension using Monte Carlo simulations. To demonstrate the feasibility of the method, we present some numerical data for the 3D Ising model. © 2007 IOP Publishing Ltd and SISSA.