Discontinuous phase transition in a dimer lattice gas

I study a dimer model on the square lattice with nearest neighbor exclusion as the only interaction. Detailed simulations using tomographic entropic sampling show that as the chemical potential is varied, there is a strongly discontinuous phase transition, at which the particle density jumps by about 18% of its maximum value, 1/4. The transition is accompanied by the onset of orientational order, to an arrangement corresponding to the {1/2, 0, 1/2} structure identified by Phares [Physica B 409, 1096 (2011)] in a dimer model with finite repulsion at fixed density. Using finite-size scaling and Binder's cumulant, the expected scaling behavior at a discontinuous transition is verified in detail. The discontinuous transition can be understood qualitatively given that the model possesses eight equivalent maximum-density configurations, so that its coarse-grained description corresponds to that of the q = 8 Potts model. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4709617]