Resolving the order of phase transitions in Monte Carlo simulations

Abstract
The authors made a Monte Carlo simulation of the two-dimensional Potts model with q=3, 4 and 5 to examine the question whether numerical methods can distinguish the order of a phase transition for the subtle cases that this model exemplifies. They found that the finite-size scaling test for susceptibilities has sufficient power for this purpose, whereas the simple method of detecting metastability signals often fails.