Accelerated dynamics in simulations of first-order phase transitions

We show that the method of Fourier acceleration can be used to speed up tunneling between degenerate and near-degenerate minima of the effective action in Langevin simulations of statistical systems. Acceleration factors of two orders of magnitude are attained. Such improvement is important for the study of weak first-order phase transitions, for simulations of spin glasses, and for the method of simulated annealing in optimization problems.