Identifying transitions in finite systems by means of partition function zeros and microcanonical inflection-point analysis: A comparison for elastic flexible polymers

摘要

For the estimation of transition points of finite elastic, flexible polymerswith chain lengths from $13$ to $309$ monomers, we compare systematicallytransition temperatures obtained by the Fisher partition function zerosapproach with recent results from microcanonical inflection-point analysis.These methods rely on accurate numerical estimates of the density of states,which have been obtained by advanced multicanonical Monte Carlo samplingtechniques. Both the Fisher zeros method and microcanonical inflection-pointanalysis yield very similar results and enable the unique identification oftransition points in finite systems, which is typically impossible in theconventional canonical analysis of thermodynamic quantities.