CRITICAL-BEHAVIOR OF THE 3-DIMENSIONAL ISING-MODEL - A HIGH-RESOLUTION MONTE-CARLO STUDY

Using recently developed histogram techniques and an ultrafast multispin coding simulation algorithm, we have investigated the critical behavior of the d = 3 simple-cubic Ising model. We have studied lattice sizes ranging from L = 8 to 96 using between 3 X 10(6) and 12 X 10(6) Monte Carlo steps (complete lattice updates). By accurately measuring the finite-size behavior of several different thermodynamic quantities, we are able to determine the critical properties with a precision comparable to that obtained with Monte Carlo renormalization-group and sophisticated series-expansion techniques. The best estimate of the inverse critical temperature from our analysis is K(c) = 0.221 659 5 +/- 0.000 002 6. The advantages of the histogram technique are discussed, as are the potential problems that can arise at this level of resolution.