LAUSR

Funding Information This research was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, BO1366-10/2. Norddeutscher Verbund für Hochund Höchleistungsrechnen grant shp00015. We analyse the simulation of strongly degenerate electrons at finite temperature using the recently introduced permutation blocking path integral Monte Carlo (PB-PIMC) method [T. Dornheim et al., New J. Phys. 17, 073017 (2015)]. As a representative example, we consider electrons in a harmonic confinement and carry out simulations for up to P = 2000 so-called imaginary-time propagators – an important convergence parameter within the PIMC formalism. This allows us to study the P-dependence of different observables of the configuration space in the Monte Carlo simulations and of the fermion sign problem. We find a surprisingly persisting effect of the permutation blocking for large P, which is explained by comparing different length scales. Finally, we touch upon the uniform electron gas in the warm dense matter regime.