Density functional approach to the structure of uniform fluids

Abstract

The structure of uniform fluids is studied here by using a density functional approach. The key property of interest is the radial distribution function which is essentially the density distribution in the field of a tagged fluid particle. The theory is applied to the neutral fluid mixture as well as ionic fluids. The only inputs used are the first and second order direct correlation functions. For the uniform fluid mixture, the different auto- and cross-distribution functions are found to show density oscillation depending upon the different diameters and the results are quite comparable to the results obtained through Fourier transform. The work is extended to a uniform electrolyte within the restricted primitive model using a correlation function corresponding to the mean spherical approximation. Once again the results are quite good and compare well with the results obtained from the usual Fourier transform technique.