A simple systematic rule, inspired by high-temperature series expansion (HTSE) results, is proposed for optimizing the expression for thermodynamic observables of ferromagnets exhibiting critical behavior at
Tc. This ``extended scaling'' scheme leads to a protocol for the choice of scaling variables, $\ensuremath{\tau}=(T\ensuremath{-}{T}_{c})∕T$ or $({T}^{2}\ensuremath{-}{T}_{c}^{2})∕{T}^{2}$ depending on the observable instead of $(T\ensuremath{-}{T}_{c})∕{T}_{c}$, and more importantly to temperature dependent noncritical prefactors for each observable. The rule corresponds to scaling of the leading term of the reduced susceptibility above
Tc as ${\ensuremath{\chi}}_{c}^{*}(T)\ensuremath{\sim}{\ensuremath{\tau}}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\gamma}}$ in agreement with standard practice with scaling variable $\ensuremath{\tau}$ and for the leading term of the second-moment correlation length as ${\ensuremath{\xi}}_{c}^{*}(T)\ensuremath{\sim}{T}^{\ensuremath{-}1∕2}{\ensuremath{\tau}}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\nu}}$. For the specific heat in bipartite lattices, the rule gives ${C}_{c}^{*}(T)\ensuremath{\sim}{T}^{\ensuremath{-}2}{[({T}^{2}\ensuremath{-}{T}_{c}^{2})∕{T}^{2}]}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\alpha}}$. The latter two expressions are not standard. The scheme can allow for confluent and noncritical correction terms. A stringent test of the extended scaling is made through analyses of high-precision numerical and HTSE data, or real data, on the three-dimensional canonical Ising,
XY, and Heisenberg ferromagnets. For the susceptibility $\ensuremath{\chi}(T)$ and the correlation length $\ensuremath{\xi}(T)$ of the three ferromagnets, their optimized expression, which consists of the leading terms [respectively, ${\ensuremath{\chi}}_{c}^{*}(T)$ and ${\ensuremath{\xi}}_{c}^{*}(T)$] and a quite limited number of confluent and noncritical correction terms, represents real data to surprisingly good approximations over the entire temperature range from
Tc to infinity. The temperature dependent prefactors introduced are of crucial importance not only in fixing the optimized expression at relatively high temperatures but also in determining appropriately the small amplitude correction terms. For the specific heat of the Ising ferromagnet,
Cc∗(T) combined with two noncritical correction terms which are calculated with no free parameters once the correlation length critical parameters are known reproduces real data nicely also over the whole temperature range.
A long-standing issue in a three-dimensional Ising spin glass (3DISG) is to settle the critical exponents. Numerical simulations and a conventional finite-size-scaling analysis have given controversial estimates, in particular, for the value of thermal exponent ν. Here a recently proposed extended scaling scheme is reviewed and illustrated for the canonical two-dimensional Ising ferromagnet. By applying the extended scaling to our extensive Monte Carlo data for 3DISG, consistent estimates of critical parameters are obtained in contrast to previous analyses.
If scaling variables and scaling expressions are chosen judiciously, ``critical'' scaling analyses do not need to be restricted to a narrow range of temperatures near the critical point. The standard scaling variable $(T\ensuremath{-}{T}_{c})/{T}_{c}$ is inadapted to wide ranges of temperature because it diverges at high temperatures. With the variable $\ensuremath{\tau}=(T\ensuremath{-}{T}_{c})/T$, in the high-dimension (mean-field) limit, the reduced susceptibility and the second-moment correlation length of the Ising ferromagnet depend on temperature as $\ensuremath{\chi}(T)={\ensuremath{\tau}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ and $\ensuremath{\xi}(T)={T}^{\ensuremath{-}1/2}{\ensuremath{\tau}}^{\ensuremath{-}1/2}$ exactly over the entire temperature range above the critical temperature
Tc. For the canonical two-dimensional square lattice near-neighbor Ising ferromagnet, it is shown that compact ``extended scaling'' expressions analogous to the high-dimensional limit form but with the appropriate exponents give accurate approximations to the true temperature dependencies, again over the entire temperature range from
Tc to infinity. Within this approach, for near-neighbor interaction systems, there is no crossover temperature above which mean-field-like behavior sets in.
Extensive simulations are made on Ising Spin Glasses (ISG) with Gaussian, Laplacian and bimodal interaction distributions in dimension four. Standard finite size scaling analyses near and at criticality provide estimates of the critical inverse temperatures
βc, critical exponents, and critical values of a number of dimensionless parameters. Independent estimates are obtained for
βc and the exponent
ν from thermodynamic derivative peak data. A detailed explanation is given of scaling in the thermodynamic limit with the ISG scaling variable
τ=1−β2/βc2 and the appropriate scaling expressions. Data over the entire paramagnetic range of temperatures are analysed in order to obtain further estimates of the critical exponents together with correction to scaling terms. The Privman-Fisher ansatz then leads to compact scaling expressions for the whole paramagnetic regime and for all sample sizes L. Comparisons between the 4d ISG models show that the critical dimensionless parameters characteristic of a universality class, and the susceptibility and correlation length critical exponents
γ and
ν, depend on the form of the interaction distribution. From these observations it can be deduced that critical exponents are not universal in ISGs, at least in dimension four.
We study the second-moment correlation length and the reduced susceptibility of two ferromagnetic Ising models with zero-temperature ordering. By introducing a scaling variable motivated by high-temperature series expansions, we are able to scale data for the one-dimensional Ising ferromagnet rigorously over the entire temperature range. Analogous scaling expressions are then applied to the two-dimensional fully frustrated Villain model where excellent finite-size scaling over the entire temperature range is achieved. Thus we broaden the applicability of the extended scaling method to Ising systems having a zero-temperature critical point.
It is often assumed that for treating numerical (or experimental) data on continuous transitions the formal analysis derived from the renormalization-group theory can only be applied over a narrow temperature range, the ``critical region''; outside this region correction terms proliferate rendering attempts to apply the formalism hopeless. This pessimistic conclusion follows largely from a choice of scaling variables and scaling expressions, which is traditional but very inefficient for data covering wide temperature ranges. An alternative ``extended scaling'' approach can be made where the choice of scaling variables and scaling expressions is rationalized in the light of well established high-temperature series expansion developments. We present the extended scaling approach in detail, and outline the numerical technique used to study the three-dimensional (
3D) Ising model. After a discussion of the exact expressions for the historic
1D Ising spin chain model as an illustration, an exhaustive analysis of high quality numerical data on the canonical simple cubic lattice
3D Ising model is given. It is shown that in both models, with appropriate scaling variables and scaling expressions (in which leading correction terms are taken into account where necessary), critical behavior extends from
Tc up to infinite temperature.