GPU-accelerated Monte Carlo simulations of anisotropic Heisenberg ferromagnets

Abstract

The Monte Carlo method is a powerful technique for computing thermodynamic magnetic states of otherwise unsolvable spin Hamiltonians, but the method becomes computationally prohibitive with increasing number of spins and the simulation of real materials and nanostructures is cumbersome. This paper presents the acceleration of Monte Carlo simulations of the three-dimensional anisotropic Heisenberg model on Graphics-Processing Units (GPU). The GPU implementation of the method presented here provides an acceleration of two orders of magnitude over conventional implementations and enables the simulation of large systems, with any crystal lattice, containing up to $10^8$ spins on a single GPU. This offers the possibility to simulate complex structures and devices that are hundreds of nanometers in size in order to compute their magnetic state at finite temperature with atomistic resolution.