Liquid-Vapor Transition and Critical Behavior of The Ultrasoft Restricted Primitive Model of Polyelectrolytes : a Monte Carlo Study

TL;DR

This study uses Monte Carlo simulations to analyze the liquid-vapor transition and critical behavior of a polyelectrolyte model with ultrasoft interactions, providing precise critical parameters but inconclusive criticality nature.

Contribution

It offers the first detailed finite size analysis of this polyelectrolyte model's phase transition parameters using Monte Carlo methods.

Findings

Precise critical temperature, chemical potential, and density determined.

Finite size effects analyzed across four different volumes.

Nature of the criticality remains inconclusive.

Abstract

We present a Monte-Carlo study of the liquid-vapor transition and the critical behavior of a model of polyelectrolytes with soft gaussian charge distributions introduced recently by Coslovich, Hansen, and Kahl [J. Chem. Phys. \textbf{134}, 244514 (2011)]. A finite size study involving four different volumes in the grand canonical ensemble yields a precise determination of the critical temperature, chemical potential, and density of the model. Attempts to determine the nature of the criticality and to obtain reliable values for the critical exponents are not conclusive.