Common features of deconfining and chiral critical points in QCD and the three state Potts model in an external field

In the presented study we investigated the second order endpoints of the lines of first order phase transitions which emerge for the QCD in the heavy and light quark mass regime and for the three-dimensional three state Potts model with an external field. We located the endpoints with Binder cumulants and constructed the energy-like and ordering-field-like observables. The joint probability distributions of these scaling fields and the values of the Binder cumulant confirm that all three endpoints belong to the universality class of the 3-dimensional Ising model. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.