Universality class of criticality in the restricted primitive model electrolyte

Abstract

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 temperature-density, (T, rho), loci of inflections, Q = <m^2>^2/<m^4> maxima, 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), SAW (n = 0), and n = 1 criticality with potentials phi(r)>Phi/r^{4.9} when r \to \infty.