Universality class of criticality in the restricted primitive model electrolyte

• Published in: Physical review letters Vol. 88; no. 18; p. 185701
• Main Authors: Luijten, Erik, Fisher, Michael E, Panagiotopoulos, Athanassios Z
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 06-05-2002
• ISSN: 0031-9007; 1079-7114
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.88.185701

The 1:1 equisized hard-sphere electrolyte or restricted primitive model has been simulated via grand-canonical fine-discretization Monte Carlo. Newly devised unbiased finite-size extrapolation methods using loci in the temperature-density or (T,rho) plane of isothermal rho(2-k) vs pressure inflections, of Q identical with<m(2)>(2)/<m(4)> maxima, and of canonical and C(V) criticality, yield estimates of (T(c),rho(c)) to +/-(0.04,3)%. Extrapolated exponents and Q ratio are (gamma,nu,Q(c)) = [1.24(3), 0.63(3); 0.624(2)], which support Ising (n = 1) behavior with (1.23(9), 0.630(3); 0.623(6)), but exclude classical, XY (n = 2), self-avoiding walk (n = 0), and n = 1 criticality with potentials varphi(r)>Phi/r(4.9) when r-->infinity.