Competition of percolation and phase separation in a fluid of adhesive hard spheres

Abstract

Using a combination of Monte Carlo techniques, we locate the liquid--vapor critical point of adhesive hard spheres. We find that the critical point lies deep inside the gel region of the phase diagram. The (reduced) critical temperature and density are $\tau_c=0.1133\pm0.0005$ and $\rho_c=0.508\pm0.01$. We compare these results with the available theoretical predictions. Using a finite-size scaling analysis, we verify that the critical behavior of the adhesive hard sphere model is consistent with that of the 3D Ising universality class.