Phase Diagram of a Lattice Microemulsion Model in Two Dimensions

TL;DR

This paper investigates the phase diagram of a 2D lattice microemulsion model using mean-field theory and Monte Carlo simulations, improving previous results and identifying critical points.

Contribution

It introduces an improved mean-field approach by exactly summing surfactant degrees of freedom and combines it with Monte Carlo simulations for accurate phase diagram analysis.

Findings

Enhanced phase diagrams compared to earlier mean-field results

Identification of critical line and tricritical point

Validation of theoretical predictions with simulations

Abstract

The phase diagram of a lattice microemulsion model proposed by Ciach, H{\o}ye and Stell is studied using mean-field theory and Monte Carlo simulations. Surfactant directional degrees of freedom are summed out exactly before mean-field theory is applied, and the resulting phase diagrams are much improved compared with previous mean-field results. The critical line and tricritical point is located using Monte Carlo simulations and finite size scaling.