Evidence for softening of first-order transition in 3D by quenched disorder

Abstract

We study by extensive Monte Carlo simulations the effect of random bond dilution on the phase transition of the three-dimensional 4-state Potts model which is known to exhibit a strong first-order transition in the pure case. The phase diagram in the dilution-temperature plane is determined from the peaks of the susceptibility for sufficiently large system sizes. In the strongly disordered regime, numerical evidence for softening to a second-order transition induced by randomness is given. Here a large-scale finite-size scaling analysis, made difficult due to strong crossover effects presumably caused by the percolation fixed point, is performed.