The role of Wang-Landau sampling in materials development

An understanding of the thermodynamic behavior of materials as well as the prediction of the properties of ``materials by design'' often depends upon knowledge of the free energy of the system under study. Computer simulations offer a powerful tool for such investigations, but traditional methods often suffer from long time scales and metastable states due to the roughness of the free energy landscape. Wang-Landau sampling\footnote{F. Wang and D. P. Landau, Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 2050 (2001); F. Wang and D. P. Landau, Phys. Rev. E 64, 05610 (2001).} is a powerful alternative to traditional Monte Carlo algorithms which can alleviate many such problems. We will review the Wang-Landau algorithm and discuss various implementations as well as possible application to materials development.