We present a grand canonical Monte Carlo simulation study of the phase
diagram of a Lennard-Jones fluid adsorbed in a fractal and highly porous
aerogel. The gel environment is generated from an off-lattice diffusion limited
cluster-cluster aggregation process. Simulations have been performed with the
multicanonical ensemble sampling technique. The biased sampling function has
been obtained by histogram reweighting calculations. Comparing the confined and
the bulk system liquid-vapor coexistence curves we observe a decrease of both
the critical temperature and density in qualitative agreement with experiments
and other Monte Carlo studies on Lennard-Jones fluids confined in random
matrices of spheres. At variance with these numerical studies we do not observe
upon confinement a peak on the liquid side of the coexistence curve associated
with a liquid-liquid phase coexistence. In our case only a shouldering of the
coexistence curve appears upon confinement. This shoulder can be associated
with high density fluctuations in the liquid phase. The coexisting vapor and
liquid phases in our system show a high degree of spatial disorder and
inhomogeneity.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.
