On the acceptance probability of replica-exchange Monte Carlo trials

An analytical justification for the empirical observation that the acceptance probability can be made uniform across a multireplica partition by selecting temperature intervals is provided. As such, parallel tempering in its original form in which the replicas differ in temperature only is considered. Generalizations such as hyperparallel tempering that employ replicas differing in chemical potential or in Hamiltonian can be subject to the analysis developed.