Integral equation study of an ideal Ising mixture

Abstract

We construct an integral equation scheme for magnetic binary mixtures of an ideal soft-core Ising fluid and a soft-sphere fluid by mapping the system onto an equivalent nonmagnetic ternary mixture. We apply the multicomponent Ornstein-Zernike equation together with a closure relation based on the soft mean spherical approximation and a field constraint for the Ising fluid component. Phase coexistence curves are calculated both by directly evaluating the chemical potentials via the bridge function, and by using a Maxwell-like construction which is derived in the text. Our results are compared to Monte Carlo data obtained earlier, and we find that the second method yields a much better agreement with the simulations.