In the last years different studies have revealed the usefulness of a microcanonical analysis of finite systems when dealing with phase transitions. In this approach the quantities of interest are exclusively expressed as derivatives of the entropy $S=\ln \Omega$ where $\Omega$ is the density of states. Obviously, the density of states has to be known with very high accuracy for this kind of analysis. Important progress has been achieved recently in the computation of the density of states of classical systems, as new types of algorithms have been developed. Here we extend one of these methods, originally formulated for systems with discrete degrees of freedom, to systems with continuous degrees of freedom. As an application we compute the density of states of the three-dimensional $XY$ model and demonstrate that critical quantities can directly be determined from the density of states of finite systems in cases where the degrees of freedom take continuous values.

• Received 24 February 2005

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.71.056705