Comparison of sampling efficiency between simulated tempering and replica exchange

We compared the sampling efficiency of simulated tempering and replica exchange. Our results indicate that simulated tempering is superior to replica exchange if the parameters for temperature transition in simulated tempering are adjusted to be proportional to the partition function. It is shown that, in simulated tempering, the rate of traversing energy space of different temperatures is much higher than that in replica exchange, especially in the case of low tempering frequency and/or larger temperature separations. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics.