Microcanonical simulation of complex actions: The Wess-Zumino-Witten case

Abstract

We present the main results of our microcanonical simulation of the Wess-Zumino-Witten action functional. This action, being highly nontrivial and capable of exhibiting many different phase transitions, is chosen to be representative of general complex actions. We verify the applicability of microcanonical simulation by successfully obtaining two of the many critical points of the Wess-Zumino-Witten (WZW) action. The microcanonical algorithm has the additional advantage of exhibiting critical behavior for a small 8 × 8 lattice. We also briefly discuss the subtleties that, in general, arise in simulating a complex action. Our algorithm for complex actions can be extended to the study of D-branes in the WZW action.