Hidden Criticality of Counterion Condensation Near a Charged Cylinder

TL;DR

This paper investigates the counterion condensation transition near a charged cylinder, revealing critical behavior and the importance of finite-size effects in the transition's nature.

Contribution

It provides a finite-size scaling analysis confirming the criticality of the complete condensation transition and its impact on the transition's discontinuity.

Findings

Counterions are fully bound at a finite Manning parameter.

Heat capacity drops at the transition point.

Critical exponents match those of the Manning transition.

Abstract

We study the condensation transition of counterions on a charged cylinder via Monte Carlo simulations. Varying the cylinder radius systematically in relation to the system size, we find that all counterions are bound to the cylinder and the heat capacity shows a drop at a finite Manning parameter. A finite-size scaling analysis is carried out to confirm the criticality of the complete condensation transition, yielding the same critical exponents with the Manning transition. We show that the existence of the complete condensation is essential to explain how the condensation nature alters from continuous to discontinuous transition.