English

Finite-size behaviour of the microcanonical specific heat

Statistical Mechanics 2009-11-10 v1 Nuclear Theory

Abstract

For models which exhibit a continuous phase transition in the thermodynamic limit a numerical study of small systems reveals a non-monotonic behaviour of the microcanonical specific heat as a function of the system size. This is in contrast to a treatment in the canonical ensemble where the maximum of the specific heat increases monotonically with the size of the system. A phenomenological theory is developed which permits to describe this peculiar behaviour of the microcanonical specific heat and allows in principle the determination of microcanonical critical exponents.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0411153,
  title  = {Finite-size behaviour of the microcanonical specific heat},
  author = {H. Behringer and M. Pleimling and A. Hueller},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0411153},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

15 pages, 7 figures, submitted to J. Phys. A