Monte Carlo calculation of chemical potential for the Stockmayer fluid

Abstract

The chemical potential of the Stockmayer fluid is computed by the canonical ensemble Monte Carlo methods of Widom, Bennett, and Han. Both spherical cutoff and metallic Ewald sum techniques are employed. For the states studied it is found that the Ewald sum provides little improvement over the simpler spherical cutoff, that Bennett’s and Han’s methods produce essentially the same results, and that for certain states Widom’s method is less accurate than Bennett’s or Han’s. The accuracy of the chemical potential calculated via the three methods was verified with Adams’ version of the grand canonical ensemble Monte Carlo method.