Critical Binder cumulant and universality: Fortuin-Kasteleyn clusters and order-parameter fluctuations

We investigate the dependence of the critical Binder cumulant of the magnetization and the largest Fortuin-Kasteleyn cluster on the boundary conditions and aspect ratio of the underlying square Ising lattices. By means of the Swendsen-Wang algorithm, we generate numerical data for large system sizes and we perform a detailed finite-size scaling analysis for several values of the aspect ratio r, for both periodic and free boundary conditions. We estimate the universal probability density functions of the largest Fortuin-Kasteleyn cluster and we compare it to those of the magnetization at criticality. It is shown that these probability density functions follow similar scaling laws, and it is found that the values of the critical Binder cumulant of the largest Fortuin-Kasteleyn cluster are upper bounds to the values of the respective order-parameter's cumulant, with a splitting behavior for large values of the aspect ratio. We also investigate the dependence of the amplitudes of the magnetization and the largest Fortuin-Kasteleyn cluster on the aspect ratio and boundary conditions. We find that the associated exponents, describing the aspect-ratio dependencies, are different for the magnetization and the largest Fortuin-Kasteleyn cluster, but in each case are independent of boundary conditions.