Critical-point and coexistence-curve properties of the Lennard-Jones fluid: A finite-size scaling study

Critical behavior of ionic solids

Phase transitions of lattice models of ionic crystals are studied by computer simulation. The nature of order-disorder transitions on different crystal structures is established and compared with the behavior of related Ising models. It is found that for both, continuous and first order transitions the basic features seem to be similar to those of Ising systems.

Interface localization-delocalization transition in a symmetric polymer blend: a finite-size scaling Monte Carlo study

Using extensive Monte Carlo simulations, we study the phase diagram of a symmetric binary (AB) polymer blend confined into a thin film as a function of the film thickness D. The monomer-wall interactions are short ranged and antisymmetric, i.e., the left wall attracts the A component of the mixture with the same strength as the right wall does the B component, and this gives rise to a first order wetting transition in a semi-infinite geometry. The phase diagram and the crossover between different critical behaviors is explored. For large film thicknesses we find a first order interface localization-delocalization transition, and the phase diagram comprises two critical points, which are the finite film width analogies of the prewetting critical point. Using finite-size scaling techniques we locate these critical points, and present evidence of a two-dimensional Ising critical behavior. When we reduce the film width the two critical points approach the symmetry axis straight phi=1/2 of the phase diagram, and for D approximately 2R(g) we encounter a tricritical point. For an even smaller film thickness the interface localization-delocalization transition is second order, and we find a single critical point at straight phi=1/2. Measuring the probability distribution of the interface position, we determine the effective interaction between the wall and the interface. This effective interface potential depends on the lateral system size even away from the critical points. Its system size dependence stems from the large but finite correlation length of capillary waves. This finding gives direct evidence of a renormalization of the interface potential by capillary waves in the framework of a microscopic model.

Probability distribution of the order parameter for the three-dimensional ising-model universality class: A high-precision monte carlo study

We study the probability distribution P(M) of the order parameter (average magnetization) M, for the finite-size systems at the critical point. The systems under consideration are the 3-dimensional Ising model on a simple cubic lattice, and its 3-state generalization known to have remarkably small corrections to scaling. Both models are studied in a cubic box with periodic boundary conditions. The model with reduced corrections to scaling makes it possible to determine P(M) with unprecedented precision. We also obtain a simple, but remarkably accurate, approximate formula describing the universal shape of P(M).

Temperature and density extrapolations in canonical ensemble monte carlo simulations

We show how to use the multiple histogram method to combine canonical ensemble Monte Carlo simulations made at different temperatures and densities. The method can be applied to study systems of particles with arbitrary interaction potential and to compute the thermodynamic properties over a range of temperatures and densities. The calculation of the Helmholtz free energy relative to some thermodynamic reference state enables us to study phase coexistence properties. We test the method on the Lennard-Jones fluids for which many results are available.

Lattice-switch monte carlo method

We present a Monte Carlo method for the direct evaluation of the difference between the free energies of two crystal structures. The method is built on a lattice-switch transformation that maps a configuration of one structure onto a candidate configuration of the other by "switching" one set of lattice vectors for the other, while keeping the displacements with respect to the lattice sites constant. The sampling of the displacement configurations is biased, multicanonically, to favor paths leading to gateway arrangements for which the Monte Carlo switch to the candidate configuration will be accepted. The configurations of both structures can then be efficiently sampled in a single process, and the difference between their free energies evaluated from their measured probabilities. We explore and exploit the method in the context of extensive studies of systems of hard spheres. We show that the efficiency of the method is controlled by the extent to which the switch conserves correlated microstructure. We also show how, microscopically, the procedure works: the system finds gateway arrangements which fulfill the sampling bias intelligently. We establish, with high precision, the differences between the free energies of the two close packed structures (fcc and hcp) in both the constant density and the constant pressure ensembles.

Effects of confinement on critical adsorption: absence of critical depletion for fluids in slit pores

The adsorption of a near-critical fluid confined in a slit pore is investigated by means of density functional theory and by Monte Carlo simulation for a Lennard-Jones fluid. Our work was stimulated by recent experiments for SF6 adsorbed in a mesoporous glass, which showed the striking phenomenon of critical depletion, i.e., the adsorption excess Gamma first increases but then decreases very rapidly to negative values as the bulk critical temperature T(c) is approached from above along near-critical isochores. By contrast, our density functional and simulation results, for a range of strongly attractive wall-fluid potentials, show Gamma monotonically increasing and eventually saturating as the temperature is lowered toward T(c) along both the critical (rho=rho(c)) and subcritical isochores (rho<rho(c)). Such behavior results from the increasingly slow decay of the density profile away from the walls, into the middle of the slit, as T-->T(+)(c). For rho<rho(c) we find that in the fluid the effective bulk field, which is negative and which favors desorption, is insufficient to dominate the effects of the surface fields which favor adsorption. We compare this situation with earlier results for the lattice gas model with a constant (negative) bulk field where critical depletion was found. A qualitatively different behavior of the density profiles and adsorption is found in simulations for intermediate and weakly attractive wall-fluid potentials, but in no case do we observe the critical depletion found in experiments. We conclude that the latter cannot be accounted for by a single pore model.

Monte Carlo approach to the gas-liquid transition in porous materials

The gas-liquid transition of a "quenched-annealed"(QA) system is studied by grand-canonical Monte Carlo simulation. The "quenched" particles are hard spheres within configurations chosen randomly from those of an equilibrium hard-sphere system at given density. The fluid particles interact with the matrix particles by a hard-core potential and with each other by a hard-core potential and an additional potential of a Lennard-Jones type. Our results are in good qualitative agreement with various theoretical approaches. With increasing matrix density the critical temperature is lowered compared to that of the bulk system and the gap between the gas and liquid densities narrowed. Our simulations confirm, for this QA system, the possibility of two fluid-fluid transitions substituting for the unique gas-liquid transition of the bulk system. They demonstrate the necessity to average over a significant number of matrix realizations in order to obtain a quantitative location of the phase coexistence lines.

Critical-point finite-size scaling in the microcanonical ensemble

We develop a scaling theory for the finite-size critical behavior of the microcanonical entropy (density of states) of a system with a critically divergent heat capacity. The link between the microcanonical entropy and the canonical energy distribution is exploited to establish the former, and corroborate its predicted scaling form, in the case of the 3d Ising universality class. We show that the scaling behavior emerges clearly when one accounts for the effects of the negative background constant contribution to the canonical critical specific heat. We show that this same constant plays a significant role in determining the observed differences between the canonical and microcanonical specific heats of systems of finite size, in the critical region.