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arXiv:cond-mat/9908025 · Physical review. E, Statistical physics, plasmas, fluids, and related interdisciplinary topics

Critical-point finite-size scaling in the microcanonical ensemble

Ann Bruce, Nigel B. Wilding

Published Oct 1, 1999• 14 citations
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Abstract

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.

DOI
10.1103/physreve.60.3748

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The basic quantity for the description of the statistical properties of physical systems is the density of states or equivalently the microcanonical entropy. Macroscopic quantities of a system in equilibrium can be computed directly from the entropy. Response functions such as the susceptibility are for example related to the curvature of the entropy surface. Interestingly, physical quantities in the microcanonical ensemble show characteristic properties of phase transitions already in finite systems. In this paper we investigate these characteristics for finite Ising systems. The singularities in microcanonical quantities which announce a continuous phase transition in the infinite system are characterised by classical critical exponents. Estimates of the non-classical exponents which emerge only in the thermodynamic limit can nevertheless be obtained by analyzing effective exponents or by applying a microcanonical finite-size scaling theory. This is explicitly demonstrated for two- and three-dimensional Ising systems.

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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.
For models which exhibit a continuous phase transition in the thermodynamic limit a numerical study of small systems reveals a non-monotonic behaviour of the microcanonical specific heat as a function of the system size. This is in contrast to a treatment in the canonical ensemble where the maximum of the specific heat increases monotonically with the size of the system. A phenomenological theory is developed which permits us to describe this peculiar behaviour of the microcanonical specific heat and allows in principle the determination of microcanonical critical exponents.
A microcanonical finite-size ansatz in terms of quantities measurable in a finite lattice allows extending phenomenological renormalization (the so-called quotients method) to the microcanonical ensemble. The ansatz is tested numerically in two models where the canonical specific heat diverges at criticality, thus implying Fisher renormalization of the critical exponents: the three-dimensional ferromagnetic Ising model and the two-dimensional four-state Potts model (where large logarithmic corrections are known to occur in the canonical ensemble). A recently proposed microcanonical cluster method allows simulating systems as large as L=1024 (Potts) or L=128 (Ising). The quotients method provides accurate determinations of the anomalous dimension, eta, and of the (Fisher-renormalized) thermal nu exponent. While in the Ising model the numerical agreement with our theoretical expectations is very good, in the Potts case, we need to carefully incorporate logarithmic corrections to the microcanonical ansatz in order to rationalize our data.
We investigate the critical scaling behavior of finite systems in the canonical ensemble. The essential difference with the grand canonical ensemble. i.e., the constraint on the number of particles, is already known to lead to the Fisher renormalization phenomenon that modifies the thermal critical singularities. We show that, in observables that are not Fisher renormalized, it also leads to a finite-size effect governed by an exponent y1y_1y1​ that depends on the temperature exponent yty_tyt​ and the dimensionality ddd as y1=−∣2yt−d∣y_1=-|2y_t-d|y1​=−∣2yt​−d∣. We verify this prediction by a Monte Carlo analysis of several two-dimensional lattice models in the percolation, the Ising and the 3-state Potts universality classes.
The aim of this paper is to determine the behavior of the specific heat of the 4-dimensional Ising model in a region around the critical temperature, and via that determine if the Ising model and the ϕ4-model belong to the same universality class in dimension 4. In order to do this we have carried out what is currently the largest scale simulations of the 4-dimensional Ising model, extending the lattices size up to L=256 and the number of samples per size by several orders of magnitude compared to earlier works, keeping track of data for both the canonical and microcanonical ensembles. Our conclusion is that the Ising model has a bounded specific heat, while the ϕ4-model is known to have a logarithmic divergence at the critical point. Hence the two models belong to distinct universality classes in dimension 4.
The basic quantity for the description of the statistical properties of physical systems is the density of states or equivalently the microcanonical entropy. Macroscopic quantities of a system in equilibrium can be computed directly from the entropy. Response functions such as the susceptibility are for example related to the curvature of the entropy surface. Interestingly, physical quantities in the microcanonical ensemble show characteristic properties of phase transitions already in finite systems. In this paper we investigate these characteristics for finite Ising systems. The singularities in microcanonical quantities which announce a continuous phase transition in the infinite system are characterised by classical critical exponents. Estimates of the non-classical exponents which emerge only in the thermodynamic limit can nevertheless be obtained by analyzing effective exponents or by applying a microcanonical finite-size scaling theory. This is explicitly demonstrated for two- and three-dimensional Ising systems.