DENSITY FUNCTIONAL APPROXIMATION FOR NON-HARD SPHERE FLUIDS SUBJECTED TO EXTERNAL FIELDS

Abstract

A theoretical way is proposed, by which any hard sphere density functional approximation (DFA) can be applied to non-hard sphere fluids for the calculation of density profile in the framework of density functional theory (DFT). Used as examples, the present formalism is combined respectively with two recently proposed hard sphere DFAs to predict the density profile of Lennard–Jones (LJ) fluid, hard core square well (SW) fluid and penetrable potenial fluid subjected to diverse external fields. Extensive comparison between theoretical predictions and corresponding simulation results shows that the present theoretical way, when combined with an accurate hard sphere DFA, can perform well for calculating the density profile of the non-uniform fluids of the above mentioned potentials. Concretely speaking, for LJ and hard core SW fluid, even a less accurate FEDFA is sufficient, while for extreme potential such as the penetrable potenial, a more accurate adjustable parameter free version of LTDFA is needed to combine with the present theoretical way to predict density profile satisfactorily. The advantage of the proposed theoretical way is that the resultant DFA is applicable to both subcritical and supercritical temperature cases, thereby overcoming the disadvantages of previous two categories of DFT approach.