Optimization of Coulomb glass system using quenching and annealing at small disorders

Abstract

Abstract In this paper we have used Monte Carlo simulations to study the two dimensional Coulomb glassmodel at half filling. The simulations were carried out using the Metropolis algorithm at zero and small finite disorder. We have used two protocols namely quenching and annealing to find the ground state of the system. In the quenching protocol at zero disorder, we looked at the effect of temperature on the efficiency of finding the ground state. The efficiency does not improve by decreasing the temperature. Since efficiency for quenching protocol was very low, we then used the annealing protocol to find the minimum energy state of the system. The annealing protocol was much more efficient than the quenching procedure. At finite disorder less than the critical disorder, the efficiency of the quenching protocol decreased compared to the zero disorder case. These results have been discussed in terms of domain theory and the density of states.