Simulations which use ALPS' RealObservable/RealVectorObservable return in the output file under /simulation/results/quantitiy/timeseries some data I guess/hope can be used to perform ones own data analysis. Unfortunately, even after undergoing the tedious work of finding out where and how things are written out, I still do not understand the actual background of this output. It seems that independent of the simulation time/number of measurements the number of data sets per MPI task is always 2, only the binsize varies (although even that is not really related to the simulation parameters). It also took me quite some time to find out by experiment how to access the binsize, as this is needed to normalize the data in each bin. Furthermore, in the case of vector observables the binsize parameter actually contains the value actual_binsize*len_of_vector instead of simply actual_binsize. Is this a bug or a feature? In any case, it makes the further processing a bit cumbersome as one always needs to check what type of observable this is. My questions thus are: 1) What is the precise meaning of this timeseries output, i.e. does it provide (per MPI task) a set of statistically independent/normal distributed data for further data analysis? 2) How are the bins/timeseries sets generated, i.e. what controls their size, number and so on? 2) How can I (!) as a user control these quantities, in particular binsize and number of bins generated?
Best Thomas Pruschke